


Havil's Homecoming

by jadeumbrella



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-03-20 07:35:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 25
Words: 45,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18988153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadeumbrella/pseuds/jadeumbrella
Summary: The Systems Alliance has came calling for Lieutenant Commander Havil Shepard to be humanity's hero once more, but fate intervenes before she can prove herself worthy of a role she doesn't want. When the rogue agent Saren crosses her path, it's nevertheless up to her to protect the galaxy by keeping fragile alliances---and herself---together.Much of the story is from Shepard's perspective (third person narration), but we hear from other voices along the way. M Rating is for combat scenes and occasional language. (Cross-posted on ffnet. Constructive comments welcome!)





	1. Shepard

*Bang. Bang.* As the metal partition she had leaned her head on thrummed with impact, Lieutenant Commander Havil Shepard's eyes shot open. Before the visual input traveled to her brain, she had already wound her fingers tightly around the assault rifle, and once assured by its heft, flexed her wrist to find the familiar pressure of the omni-tool strapped on her right wrist, and let a tingle of biotic energy race down her left arm. Only then did she notice her shotgun, armor, and go-bag idling in the corner.

Part of Havil's mind registered that she was alone in a standard Alliance shuttle, which is why she had allowed herself to sleep. A solo transport was unheard of---even prisoners had guards---and if she had friends, Havil decided, they'd crow about the luxury the brass had afforded her. Even as this thought passed, the rest of her mind fought off smoke and screams.

She shut her eyes again and forced the cold air of the shuttle to burn her throat and chest, holding it deep in her lungs. Her body shuddered with the pounding of her heart, and she pressed herself into her physicality, starting with her toes loosely boxed in by combat boots. The chill seeped through her uniform pants, especially at her knees, and crept with icy fingers up her side. Opening her eyes anew, she finally exhaled and watched the little cloud of vapor hang for a moment and dissipate. She sent another breath after it to extinguish the flames and flickering now silently sinking under consciousness. A battery of calisthenic exercises usually did the trick for her when she woke, the slick sweat and lactic acid build up founding an inescapable present. Confined to the shuttle jump seat, she settled for pressing her spine firmly into its unyielding metal, and then leaning forward against her safety harness so gray straps cut sharply into her shoulders until the pain crested and broke a final wave over the dream.

What could possibly possess the Systems Alliance Navy, Havil wondered as she considered the empty seats around her, to send a shuttle to transfer a single soldier in the middle of third shift? She stretched out one leg, rolling a cracking ankle, and then the did the same to the other. The secrecy and unknowns in her reassignment orders irked her like a smudge on her combat visor: pack up and ship out, destination, mission, and posting classified well past her pay grade. "Ours not to reason why," she muttered to the empty seats around her as the shuttle docked. They didn't reply.

"Commander Shepard, you're wanted on the bridge," buzzed over the comm as she stepped into a lifeless cargo bay. The bay was dim, and in the faint glow of lights Havil could only pick out contours. Had any of the highly educated engineers at Alliance Central ever served on a ship, they couldn't have designed a better scene for a bloodbath. Without a helmet HUD to identify enemies and friendlies, she thought, a fight down here would be ugly. Among the disordered stacks of crates, she made out a ground vehicle, and there, in the slight orange glow of a weapons bench, a set of lockers.

She slung her gear into one of the many empty lockers and made for the cargo elevator. The initial heavy pull of the metal box against the ship's mass effect field hit her joints with a jolt. Havil again took control of her senses and reached underneath the passing memory of a heavy planet's gravity to detect instead the long, slow pulses of the ship's drive. What was a cruiser's cargo bay doing with a dreadnought's heart? As the elevator finally opened to the second deck, she frowned. The tiny mess would certainly be stocked with dehydrated meals. Havil didn't mind Alliance rations, but she despised the sleeping pods she spotted to the aft. Sleeping, she thought, was best done under an open sky, and if not there, then in a hammock or bunk, but not under floor decking. She tried to remember the pleasant feel of her last real warm shower, during Sol service time's first shift today. It would probably be some time until she had more than a wet wipe to look forward to in the morning.

With each step of the stairs to what must be the bridge, Havil became certain she had never seen a ship quite like this. This was a shakedown run, and the brass was trotting her, the so-called Hero of the Skyllian Blitz, out for the media announcement afterwards like some kind of blue-ribbon sow at the fair. For the last 35 years after they discovered a mass effect relay at the edge of the Sol system, humanity had reached into the galaxy, almost lost a war, discovered alien races, established colonies, and joined intergalactic civilization. But it still needed a female marine to smile for the cameras and assure them all was well in the cold expanse of space. Her face hardened into a scowl. Every sow, Havil thought, eventually meets the cleaver.

Havil was no hero. Once curiosity had gotten the better of her, and she had tapped through the unclassified parts of her personnel file. The Alliance's technical term for her was a "genetically superior soldier." In other words, she thought as her lips pressed into a thin line, and her legs coiled and extended in her brutally efficient stride, she excelled at killing. It was true. She could probably one up the marines she knew who kept counts---snipers, mostly---but the concept turned her stomach. A fight wasn't about numbers, but about either shooting or watching your people get shot. Kill or get killed was the right phrase, she remembered, but she'd never quite gotten the hang of the getting killed bit.

That, and to Havil battle was too fluid to get caught up in arithmetic. It wasn't that she didn't make rational decisions, but that she had so much training and, according to her file, a strong intuition---really her mind's ability to perceive minute discrepancies, like, she suddenly realized, this ship's lack of grime, dust, or mismatched light bulbs. Thinking too much about it would interrupt the flow. This and her abundance of fast---twitch muscle fibers, reasonable IQ, and biotic capability had propelled her to Lieutenant Commander.

There followed in the file a large redacted section under psychological make-up. Havil pushed that thought away as she saluted to the bridge guards and found an unfamiliar and again annoyingly dim space. She strode down the long barrel of the ship's prow until she found a man with captain's stripes in dress uniform standing directly behind the pilot.

She saluted and listened to herself say, "Lieutenant Commander Havil Shepard, reporting for duty, sir."

The man only briefly glanced back with narrowed eyes. In the racial mixing following Earth's global unification, his dark skin and closely shaved dark hair had become a common genetic inheritance, but she knew him at once-Captain David Anderson, a highly decorated soldier. What gave him away, however, was the set of his shoulders, an aura of confidence and deadliness that she would recognize anywhere as an N-trained special ops fighter. He was the first Alliance soldier to earn the terminal rank they shared-N7. Though he had aged out of active combat and into command, the ripple of muscles under his uniform as he clasped his hands behind his back still warned her of his raw power.

Shepard was determined to stand at attention as long as necessary in the oppressive silence, but the pilot wouldn't. A non-regulation cap and beard sneaked a look from his chair and curtly nodded with an even less regulation wink. To get away with that, he must be, well, beyond good. Next to him, looking stiff in the tactical station and unwilling to gawk must be an officer, probably the one she was replacing. From her position, she could just see a little grey speckling near his left temple, putting him in his thirties, though it was hard to tell now that gene therapy and medical advances slowed human aging and extended lifespans to 150 years or so. He had a career man's excellent posture and the discipline not to give in to curiosity... or wink. How many decades had it been since sideburns that length were fashionable?

"Shepard," the Captain's rich bass finally sounded. As he left aft, he followed with a deep, non-committal, and infuriatingly non-informational, "Good. Get to the comm room. Tell Nihilus I'll be there shortly."

Shepard stood at ease. The Alliance wasn't always well organized---Havil recalled her shock at the multi-million dollar price tag on replacing a shuttle window a repair team had accidentally run their space truck into---but she hadn't been this uninformed in uniform since drill instructors started firing rubber rounds while she was eating her "last meal" before N training. "The comm room?"

Ballcap's chair spun around in an automated movement. "All the way back past the galaxy map," he said. He scratched at his hair, re-seated his worn cap, wary. "Oh, and careful. Nihilus is, well, you know how Turians are. Has a stick right up his---"

"Jo-ker," the tactical officer---Shepard decided to call him Sideburns for the moment---reprimanded the pilot with what had to be the man's call sign, a note of exasperation dragged over the two-syllable rasp in his voice.

"What? He is," Joker slowly shrugged with is palms facing up, "and you know it. Besides, all the secrecy, a stealth ship, a Turian with enough firepower to level a cruiser, and now Shepard?" The pilot pointed to her, "The Lieutenant Star-of-Terra Commander Shepard?"

Shepard's back stiffened, and she folded her arms. "What of it?"

"I'm just sayin', something's up," Joker replied.

Sideburns turned to him, "None of our business." Joker responded with an eye roll before turning his chair back around. Both men shifted uneasily in their seats.

"Unless either of you is suggesting the Captain ought to be relieved..." Havil's implied rebuke hung in the cockpit.

"No, no ma'am" and a bewildered head shake answered.

"Good to hear it. Carry on." She executed a perfect heel turn for effect. In addition to discipline, the pilot lacked distance. Havil, like most junior officers, was too young to have fought alongside the many humans who fell in the First Contact War, a bloody misunderstanding of galactic traffic laws. Human explorers and colonists, like her parents, found the opportunity of distant travel the mass relays afforded intoxicating; they lodged on every inhabitable world, fulfilling that insatiable human curiosity. What they didn't know, Havil and every other human schoolchild had since learned, was that there are rules for activating the giant slings---mass effect relays---that sent ships hurtling from system to system in hours instead of hundreds of light-years. They also didn't know there were galactic traffic cops until ships started firing---Turian ships.

Shepard suddenly checked her stride, stopping near the captain's post. That was it: Turian. This was Turian ship design. She remembered the dimmed lighting for sensitive Turian eyes from N7 combat scenarios on a variety of alien vessels. Turians were so painstakingly aware of their chain of command that offing the captain at the first breach of the bridge didn't faze them. Someone else just assumed duties, all the way to the last man.

"Adam Jenkins, ma'am! And it's an honor, ma'am!" A young blond sergeant had taken her momentary reassessment as an opportunity to salute. She was surprised he hadn't hurt himself raising his hand so quickly. Wide-eyed gaze, smile, rigid posture... Havil knew the type: star-struck.

"At ease, Jenkins."

As she turned away, she heard his glee. "I bet we'll finally have a real fight now!" He couldn't have fought the Turians, and he had probably even missed the Batarians. Havil thought he certainly hadn't held a dying soldier in his arms, or listened to a friend screaming on the battlefield for help that wouldn't come.

"Careful what you wish for. You can't just patch everything up with medigel, like after the simulators in basic."

The man's ramrod posture and bright idealism never wavered. He, too, had the confidence of his training behind him, whispering in his ear, like it still did in hers, that he could perform any task, scale any mountain, neutralize any enemy. "I'll remember that, ma'am!" he returned with sparkling blue eyes. Havil left before any of the dead in her mind took control of her fist.


	2. Anderson

He knew Humans and Turians cooperated building the Normandy, but Anderson suspected a Volus designed the Captain's quarters. His knees scraped the underside of the desk as he sat in its child-sized chair. A quick nip of bourbon from the bottom drawer burned away the chill of Shepard's preternatural iciness. Privy to Shepard's full file, Nihilus wanted to test her mettle, or as he put it, "assess her improvisational command abilities and temperament," so Anderson had issued the bare bones reassignment order, arranged solitary transport, and withheld crew, ship, and mission details. He'd learned for good not to argue with a Spectre, but he wasn't going to let himself or Shepard damned for the result without a shred of evidence this time. He tapped through the confirmation for this ridiculous stunt he'd had Nihilus sign off on and attached it to his mission report. It'd hit the comm buoy the second they dropped out of FTL, seconds before they started running silent.

He remembered pitching Shepard to Admiral Steven Hackett as a candidate for the Spectres: "What about Havil Shepard? Nothing can take her down. She's the finest fighter we've got, and she's a known face." And, he didn't say, she sacrifice herself before she let a Spectre blow up colonists and blame her for it.

"Shepard?" Hackett had mused with his hand on his chin. "Her psych profile is..." he paused. "I have no doubts she's capable, Anderson. But is she stable?"

Anderson had considered for a moment. Outside the window of the fifth fleet's flagship, under Hackett's command, Sol was just disappearing behind Earth with a flare. "That's all the past-Mindoir, Akuze, Skillium, that's all over ten years ago now. I know she hasn't been given a command, but she's done nothing but train and get missions done."

"That's what concerns me," Hackett had returned with a frown. "You'd be the best judge of anyone, Anderson. If you think she's the one..."

Staring at Earth's graceful arc, Anderson had thought he caught a whiff of magnolia, but knew it was an illusion. He turned away from the view of Earth and gave a heavy sigh. Shepard had baggage, but unlike his, all of hers was dead. "I'll be there to smooth things over for her," Anderson assured. "Most importantly, we can trust her. The Alliance and duty is all she has."

Truth was, no one really knew Havil, not beyond the uniform. Not even the many therapists assigned to her or her comrades in N training could produce about her as a person. And now he knew why. The Normandy seemed colder with her aboard.

In the comm room, he found Nihilus casually seated and Shepard standing at attention until he waved her formality off. "Permission to speak freely, sir?" Shepard accosted him with crossed arms in the comm room. He nodded and watched her glance between the tall black-scaled Turian in the room and himself. "What am I doing here?"

It tickled Anderson to see Nihilus sit up, lips twitching, aggravated at what Turians would certainly call insubordination. "Commander Shepard, you've been selected as humanity's candidate for the Spectres. It's a real honor. Council Spectre Nihilus," Anderson made a point of deferring to the Turian, "will observe and evaluate you on joint missions. Our first is securing the beacon."

"Beacon, sir?" she asked. She hadn't moved a muscle at the news, and Anderson made a note not to play poker with her, ever. He tapped the room's touch interface to bring up a three-dimensional map of terrain.

"A science team on Eden Prime discovered a working Prothean beacon," Anderson explained, pointing to the long rut of a meandering dig site that scarred the planet's digital surface. "Obviously we contacted the Council for their help with this; the last Prothean artifact we found jumped our technology ahead centuries-more than," he stole a look at Nihilus, "well, more than the Systems Alliance and EarthGov have admitted."

Nihilus gave a grunt. "STG was on to you humans long ago, Anderson. It's not news to the Council."

Anderson raised his eyebrows but continued, "The scientists haven't activated it, so we don't know what might be here. We can't risk it falling into someone else's hands, not this close to the Terminus Systems." He tapped again, and and a local star map exploded with systems and the locations of various pirate groups and and minor alien races, those outside the jurisdiction of the Citadel Council and its major space-facing species who'd definitely kill for Prothean technology.

"Shepard, we need to keep this secret until we secure it," Nihilus added unnecessarily, Anderson thought, in his gravelly Turian tones.

As he was speaking, Joker cut in on the comm: "Sorry to interrupt, Captain, but we have video coming in from the surface. You need to see it."

"Get it on screen."

Grainy helmet footage of tracer fire and explosions bounced with heavy footfalls. A woman in armor plead for reinforcements and aerial support. "Get down," she shouted to the filming comm officer as rockets shook him. As he checked to see she made it through the barrage, the camera focused on her face, sweaty and exhausted. The feed jerked with the impact of a grenade, and his camera caught the horizon as he slid to the ground.

"Freeze," barked Anderson. He felt his shoulders tense, straining against his stiff dress blues.

In the static frame there loomed a giant black ship, or maybe a creature the size of Eden Prime's largest towers. Its jointed tentacle arms touched the planet's surface and its long, sleek black body was lost in the clouds. Anderson's tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. "Status report," he finally ordered over the open intercom.

"Ten minutes out. Stealth systems engaged," came Joker's reply. Anderson tapped the comm closed.

Anderson rubbed his fingertips on his thumb in thought. He watched Shepard, the lines of her profile lit by the screen, calmly study the still of the ship. The Spectre's plan was especially foolish now, and Shepard would have to be damn good to survive whatever was going on down there without proper mission prep. He glared at Nihilus, whose mandible plates slowly spread open and closed. In the dark his white clan markings markings looked for everything like a human skull.

The Normany couldn't take on that ship, but the mission was too important to abandon. This was a ship of a magnitude, especially landing on planet, that just didn't exist. The Spectre took charge; he outranked Anderson on Council business. Anderson didn't mind, not now, not on what would likely be a suicide mission for them both. Nihilus spoke first to him, then to Shepard. "Suit up, Commander. You've got ten minutes to meet us in the docking bay."

"Shepard," Anderson enjoyed how she had waited for his command, "Get ready. Take Alenko and Jenkins. We drop to the LZ as soon as we can." She was about to move, but he put a hand on her shoulder until he heard the door slide shut after Nihilus. "Commander," he looked directly in the eyes, "you will record on helmet cam at all times and maintain radio silence until you have the beacon secured. We need to keep this from getting out, but once it does, we'll need all the evidence we can get. Understood?" And I'll need it for evidence later if this all goes to hell, he didn't say.

He watched Shepard snap off a perfect salute, "Yes, sir."

As she left, he looked again at the screen. He hoped after Shepard left he'd feel warm again, but something about that ship unnerved him. He felt that turn in his gut when everything was about to blow up in his face. He'd had that feeling before.


	3. Alenko

Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko found himself boarding the cargo elevator with what he assumed was the Normandy's new XO. She had acknowledged him only by taking a corner and starting the car's quietly whirring descent after he had crossed the threshold. In the opposite corner, he fidgeted with his shirt to smooth the wrinkles from sitting at tactical. The pilot's cocksure "Try not to get killed down there, Lieutenant" brought a familiar tightness to the back of Kaidan's head and temples. He'd have to figure out how to share duty rotations with chaos personified, someone who didn't follow the Alliance script that neatly kept words and actions in check.

Kaidan minutely shifted his weight from foot to foot. Courtesy dictated in this instance, for example, that he wait until the curiosity that had started upon hearing her report in could be passed off as a nonchalant professional interest. Shepard outranked him, and it made sense Anderson would assign someone of her status to the Normandy. Of course, he had heard about her---you'd have to have been under a rock not to---the hero who saved Skyllium, an unfortunately bellicose response to humanity's quick spread to new colonies in open space the Batarians hadn't been prepared to share. If the news vids were right, she had held off waves of attackers from an entrenched but isolated position, keeping them from reaching the civilians, who were eager to tell and sell their breathless stories of rescue.

Interviews with Shepard had played on all the major networks for days. She always stood carefully at ease, and repeated her refrain with the precision of a draw-string toy: she was just a Marine doing her job. He could hear in his mind the motto the brass ensured had tagged the end of every recruitment video since. That memory finally tipped him into the impulse that had been teasing the base of his brain. Her height equaled his, and her BDU revealed a slender but muscular frame. This, too, made sense to Kaidan. Spec-ops could cover terrain over days that would make enlisted soldiers weep in hours. A smile tugged at his lips when he remembered how overbuilt hopefuls would one by one haul their sweaty, shuddering selves to ring the ancient bell to drop out of Marine training after a grueling run, climb, or obstacle course.

Shepard's striking red hair, he observed, spiked its own way here and there, and though he couldn't see them, he knew from posters the Alliance plastered everywhere that she had deeply set green hang-dog eyes. Eyes that would, he realized with a guilty shiver down his spine, would soon meet his. His pulse quickened and cheeks burned; he had been staring.

"Lieutenant Ah-len-ko," she interrupted what he hoped appeared to be a deep inspection of the deck plating's hatched pattern as the elevator door whooshed open, "correct?"

He just caught a peripheral glimpse of a hand outstretched in greeting. He forced himself to meet her gaze, relaxing his shoulders slightly when he didn't read accusation or much of anything else in them. "Yes, ma'am." When they clasped hands, the hair on the back of his stood: a biotic, with power that rivaled his.

"I wasn't briefed on crew, but I need to know your profile for our combat mission," Shepard spoke as she hauled out her gear. She pointed a thumb over her shoulder at Jenkins, who was at the weapons bench. "He's a green grunt. Straight soldier, from the looks of him. But you," she turned over her own right hand and arched an eyebrow, "are a biotic. A strong one."

"Trained sentinel, ma'am, with specialties in biotics and tech." Satisfied with the condition of his armor's seals and computerized systems, he pulled off his BDU top and slipped the shoulder and back piece over his head, squinting as it dragged over his face. "I'm proficient with a pistol, though I can handle an assault rifle if you need me to." He slid the armpieces over his gray skinsuit-made of an Asari fabric that resisted heat and cold, wicked sweat, and took weeks to smell, it was now standard issue daily under layer for all Alliance personnel. "Light armor only," he appreciatively tapped his matte black Hanhe-Kedar kit. "I have plenty of experience in the field, though," he couldn't help glancing over again and inwardly cursed as heard himself add, "probably nothing like you have, ma'am."

Her slightly narrowed eyes grabbed his as she slipped on her greaves, complete, he noted with some surprise, a sheath for an old-fashioned combat knife. Shepard's slow, measured reply hit him like drops off an icicle. "I don't need the worship, Lieutenant. For that," she tossed her head toward Jenkins, "I've already got him. I just need you to do your job." Kaidan felt his muscles freeze until she dropped her stare. They finished gearing up in merciful silence, punctuated only with the snaps of latches and clicks of holsters. As he was checking his weapons, he couldn't help but notice the long scar he had seen in the posters trailing from her right temple down to her jaw, and one that he hadn't, a patch of rough scar tissue on her left cheek stretching down her neck past her armor's collar seal.

The hairs on the back of his neck now rose, and Kaidan rushed to snap on his helmet, ship his weapons, and grab his hang strap at the back of the bay. He had meant to follow the script, saying only that it was an honor to serve with her, and that he was best in support positions. As the bay door opened to Eden Prime's atmosphere, and he gripped the strap tightly so as not to fall, he couldn't tell if it was the ship's lurch beneath him or something within that had thrown his equilibrium.


	4. Shepard

Shepard's boots squelched in knee-deep mud. She swore to herself and heaved her boot up with a hideous sucking noise. If Anderson hadn't ordered radio silence, she'd have reamed out Pressly for selecting the LZ and Joker for dropping them in it. Good thing body armor was sealed against the elements, even against the vacuum of space. How many xenoarchaeologists with advanced degrees, she wondered, would it take to know all a swamp is good for is draining?

"Ahh..." said Jenkins, scooping up a handful of mud. "EP red gold."

"Jenkins," Shepard hissed while clambering up to drier ground, "cut the chatter. Mission only here on out. We secure the beacon, then call in the Normandy. That's it."

"Sorry but there's no where like home, ma'am!"

Shepard glowered at him. Anderson sent an Eden Prime colonist into this mess without telling her? Neither the Green Grunt nor Sideburns had seen the video. "Listen, Sergeant, the colony is up against a force the three of us can't fight." Worry quickly displaced the young man's smile, but Havil didn't have all day to play counselor, and they were underpowered as it was. "The sooner we secure the beacon, the sooner the Normandy can call for help. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am," Jenkins managed.

"Good. Now there's no place like *cover*, so let's move it and keep it quiet. The situation is an unknown, but there have been hostiles in the area."

From the swamp, the scientists had excavated a long, winding trail, cutting a miniature canyon into the red dirt. Scattered boulders too costly to remove dotted its floor. Havil's team silently crouched behind one while she climbed one wall to scout the eerily quiet area. Thick vegetation formed an impassable groundcover here above the excavated area, and ahead it would run into dense jungle. Even from here, though, she could just glimpse the top skyline of Eden Prime's impressive colonial center and the sinister ship perched directly on its main tower. A solid red dot in her peripheral vision assured her that her helmet was recording. The hulk would easily dwarf any known ship, even the Asari flagship, the Destiny Ascension. She heard the cracking and booming of the collapsing tower as the shiny, purple-black thing with its jointed fingers on the ground teetered slightly and then lifted off, sparking red bolts of energy discharge to the dark clouds around it.

As she scrambled back down to her team, the patter of rain sounded on her helmet, and droplets neatly shed from her visor's treated plastiglass. She wondered how Turians handled rain, as they only rarely donned helmets over their naturally armored head crests. Nihilus, though he was supposed to be evaluating her, had jumped bareheaded out of the Normandy early, claiming on his way he'd do better solo.

Maybe Turians and humans just weren't up to joint combat operations yet. More likely, Havil considered, the beacon was too important for her to mess something up or slow him down.

With her back to the boulder, she brought up a map of the area on her omni-tool, signalling waypoints to Alenko and Jenkins, who synced them to their own omni-tools. They had a click or more to the dig site in this shooting gallery. The two men focused on her, watching for orders. The black ship had gone-she hoped the Normandy's stealth system had worked-but this mission, like everything else since Havil saw those reassignment orders, played like a sick joke. The trust in her men's eyes was the punchline.

As she was about to signal a move-out, Shepard felt the hairs on her neck raise and instantly lifted a fist to halt Jenkins and Alenko in silence. Her helmet's HUD was clear-no thermal signatures-but she gripped her assault rifle tightly. At the sound of another boom from the colonial center-some delayed collapse-he heard Jenkins' armor rustling, and then air exploded with fire. Chips of rock plinked down from their boulder on her and Alenko, slowly shredding their cover. Jenkins' scream tore through the din as the superfine heated pellets of enemy fire overwhelmed his kinetic barrier shielding and shot through his armor, halting his momentum, and, Havil could just discern in the commotion, spinning him face down in the wet dirt. Alenko coiled to spring, but she slammed him back against the rock with her forearm. She stared into his wide-eyed protest and shook her head. Her on-suit computer pinged an alert. Jenkins was already dead.

Now marked on the HUD's ghosted overlays on her visor were five red dots-unknown enemy. At a pause in the fire, Havil carefully edged out to peer around the rock and felt a nasty stream of fire impact her shields, a few pellets punching through to her biotic barrier. "Alenko," she kept her voice low and even, "drones, airborne. 3 visible. Arm tech attacks-sabotage, overcharge, whatever you've got. Then rifle support from here. I'll go on ahead for close range."

"On it, Commander."

She watched as in one artful motion Alenko kneeled, holstered his pistol on his hip with a snap with his right hand, pulled the assault rifle from his back and deftly extended its butt and barrel with his left hand and propped it against the rock. He readied his omni-tool to overheat enemy weapons for a short burst. Kill or watch people get killed. She felt the familiar waves of vengeance, fury, and loyalty swirl and surge up behind her and let its crashing break pump her legs to a farther boulder, her sprint only broken by the smart smack of her shoulder. She caught a sharp breath, drew up her shotgun, and pulled up over the cover.

*Blam.*

One drone smoked and exploded in sparks. She hunkered down and waited for the shotgun to cool. The mass-effect powered weapons didn't need ammo, but she'd only get a few shots before she'd have to pop the thermal clip, even in the rain. Facing back toward Alenko, she saw the barrel of his rifle tracking a drone.

*Hiss.*

The sparks just visible in the dust meant a second was done. She checked the HUD; a third was trying to flank Alenko. Direct fire would pierce his light armor. Havil reached out her senses, feeling the weight of Eden Prime's gravitational field around her, crushing her, and the planet's crust pushing back. As she sent that heaviness and force into her body, a blue sheen crackled down from her amp to her fist, and twenty-five yards of Eden whooshed by. Suddenly she was sliding on her back directly beneath the drone, where it couldn't aim. She fired one shotgun blast into its mechanical underbelly, sprang up, and as its flight systems sputtered, she grabbed it and pounded it into the wet dirt with the butt of her shotgun. Each strike reverberated through the bones of her arms and shoulders.

"Thanks, Commander!" she heard Alenko shout. The field was clear, and Havil finally took conscious note of her shields, which had taken a beating but would recharge. The adrenaline powered her quick, brutal stride back to Alenko's position, and Jenkins's body. She turned him over and wiped the red sludge from his visor, knowing what she'd find: eyes opened wide and a brow furrowed in pain. Havil mechanically disengaged the plastiglass, smoothed his forehead and closed his eyes.

"He deserves better than this, Shepard," Alenko whispered as he stood, guarding her and checking through his scope for more enemies.

"We don't have time for this. Drop a KIA transponder. We'll activate it remotely once we reestablish contact with the Normandy." She looked into Alenko's questioning brown eyes and for a moment saw Jenkins' bright blue ones. She shook her head to clear her mind. Alenko stiffened as he prepared the transponder. "Problem, Lieutenant?"

"No ma'am." He planted it on Jenkins.

"Good. Move out."

Now that they had identified the threat, they handily cleared the rest of the LZ. All their unfamiliar marks were mechanized and dormant until motion activated them, so the HUD was useless. At least her powerful charges and shotguns worked well against them with Sideburn's skills. After a few minutes, she didn't need to order his attacks. It was efficient.

"Shepard!" Alenko whispered as they silently walked forward. "What happened here?" They were approaching the scientific outpost, and bodies littered the ground like pick-up sticks.

"A patrol troop," she gestured with her shotgun to armored Alliance corpses, "and..." she frowned behind her helmet and felt hot anger rush to her cheeks, "civilians. Let's be careful" She swallowed hard. Enemies, even friendlies down were bad, but civilians... A rampage like this was the work of terrorists, slavers, madmen-Havil's mouth tasted of acrid smoke and burnt flesh that wasn't there.

"Commander," Alenko cut into her thoughts, "ahead!"

Peering over cover through her rifle scope, she found the troop leader from the video, pinned down behind yet another boulder, but shouldering her rifle for another attack.

"Alenko," she was already running, "on the double!"

She went to the soldier and waved Alenko out to flank. Somersaulting into the boulder to break her sprint, she came up with her rifle trained on a form. She checked the scope again, and ducked as her lingering look attracted fire. Was that a Geth? Whatever it was, it was hostile. The rock she was behind was shaking from the rounds slamming into it. The soldier had just popped a thermal clip, and Havil saw the woman's muscles tense. "Stay down!" she ordered the woman, who was already breathing hard in her dirty heavy white armor with pink lining in the joints.

"Like hell I am!" the woman popped up, and her rifle reported a burst.

Havil roughly pulled Pink down by the shoulder. "If that's how we're going to do this, fine," she barked, "but nothing stupid, or I'll knock you out myself! That's an order!" The woman's military senses again overtook her adrenaline-addled mind, and she obeyed. Good. Shepard waited for the lull of the hostile unit ditching a thermal clip. She ordered, "Cover!" The soldier's answer came in another burst of assault rifle fire at the same time as one of Alenko's tech attacks exploding ahead. Shepard collected herself and biotically lifted the creature, then leaped over the boulder and beat the puddled ground with slashing steps. It fell to the ground in front at her feet, where she ended it with one blast from her shotgun. She was exposed, but Alenko and the soldier had formed up behind her, and she led them to cover they could sit back against. No enemies for now. She downed a ration bar, as did Alenko, and offered one to the woman, who took it.

Pink spoke. "Good to see reinforcements. Sgt. Ashley Williams of the 212th," she gestured at the bodies around with her half-eaten bar, "stationed here."

When she had recovered from chewing the bar, Shepard accosted her. "Commander Shepard, SSV Normandy. What the hell was that, Williams?" Shepard checked her shotgun, pumped a new thermal clip, and kicked the old one away into the dirt, where it hissed when raindrops hit it. Not hearing an answer-Williams had started on the second half of her ration bar-Havil continued. She enunciated each word very carefully, "You're no use to me dead." Havil pointedly locked eyes with Williams until Williams had to look away and slouch. Front-line heroics just in time to join the rest of your dead squad... Havil knew that look, that posture exactly. She'd lived it. "Status report, Sergeant," she ordered. Havil could see the fight and anger burning in the woman's eyes and needed to wait for the trained, rational soldier to return, or she'd get them all killed, or worse, be the only one of them to make it.

"I guess, well," Williams checked her omni-tool, "My patrol squad's dead. So is the one that was stationed here at the scientists' camp. We've been fighting since 0900, when we encountered-I'm not sure but I think they're Geth-while on a regular perimeter check. The Lieutenant ordered us to head for the docking area, figured they were here for a scientist or something."

It was now 1500. No wonder Williams was beat. "You've been fighting all day?"

"Yes, ma'am. About time you showed up. Haven't seen support from the rest of the Eden Prime regiment."

"Comms must be jammed," Alenko offered. Shepard nodded in agreement.

As Williams described the fighting, she thought. Williams didn't even know about the artifact. Here was a secret Prothean beacon, a secret stealth ship, and a secret Spectre sent to retrieve it. A Geth incursion wouldn't just appear at the same colony. Geth hadn't been beyond the Perseus Veil in 300 years. Havil doubted a human had ever seen one.

"What the-" Alenko's call cut her thoughts short.

The three peered over the boulder to watch as impaled humanoid bodies on spikes ahead suddenly blackened and began glowing with blue circuitry. The spikes lowered, and worse, the bodies started charging at them. She readied her shotgun and motioned to Williams to do the same. She was going to assign Alenko to stay to support, but found he was already gathering his biotic aura to do just that. "Let's go!" she shouted, and the two women took off at a sprint, pumping their shotguns at the bodies lopsidedly shuffling.

Dirty, panting, and covered in goop the now steady rain wouldn't dislodge, she and Williams finally emerged from the scrum. She tried to clear her visor of the black sludge with her combat gloves, but they weren't designed for absorbency. She carefully cut a piece of cloth from a dead scientist's damp coat with her combat knife and used it to wipe her visor, handing it to Williams to do the same. "What were those?" Havil asked Williams.

"Ours, ma'am, at least once." The corners of William's mouth turned down in disgust. "The bastards have been piking corpses all day, but we didn't know why. They're turning our own against us. Should've blown them with explosives if we'd have known. Thought we'd recover the bodies later."

Alenko closed his eyes for a moment, and then leveled a long look at Havil. "Activate and mark the transponder," she said, tapping her visor near the enemy HUD display, "just in case. Make sure it's local and fixed band, so we don't light up the Normandy or ourselves." He nodded. They didn't need Jenkins on their six.

Havil noticed the question hanging on Williams's lips, but didn't bother to answer. She kneeled down next to the nearest creature. This one had undoubtedly been a man, his skin now ashen and taut against obviously sinewy muscles, as if anything extra or soft had been drained out of him. Wires and hoses entered and emerged from various places, like worms tunneling through rotten flesh. Its face, too, was recognizably human, with its lipless mouth open, baring what seemed to be the only untouched feature, white menacing teeth. In the fight, his, or its eyes had glowed blue, but now they, too, were dull grey ports. It was death, death and circuits and motors. The fallen, risen as husks of human form with the single goal of ripping her apart and dragging the pieces to join them... it was as if someone had constructed Havil's nightmares. Bile rose in her throat, but she swallowed it down. She closed her own eyes for a moment and focused on the patter of the rain on her helmet, the soft give of the sodden ground beneath her feet, and the throbbing pain of the bruises from ramming into cover and taking fire. She stretched her cheek to feel her large scar pull at her skin. She returned to the real. A small rush of relief hit her when she saw Alenko was still fiddling with Jenkins' KIA transponder signal, and Williams had taken up guard.

"Husks," Shepard told her team when she joined them, summoning her authority as they turned to listen to their Commander take control, "we'll call 'em husks. They're not strategic-just a basic melee threat, so keeping them at range is ideal, and if not, then Alenko will help with control." He nodded in acknowledgement. "Williams, let's get to that excavation site and find who's responsible for," she took in the grisly scene of organic and cybernetic bodies, "all of this."


	5. Shepard

Two concentric circles of dark stone pillars in various states of reconstruction ringed the way point marked as the excavation site. In the rain, the pillars nearly gleamed. At the entrance, the arms of each circle came together as if in an embrace, or Havil thought, a strangulation. She peered in. The center held only a large puddle the exact circumference, she would wager, of the beacon. As she passed out of the ruin, Havil reached out a hand to touch a pillar, but gasped when a spark arced into her finger with a sharp needle of pain. She pressed her lips together in a grimace and shook the hand.

"Commander?" Alenko queried.

"It's nothing," she returned. "There's nothing here. Ideas, Sergeant? You know the site."

"Usually we'd have orders to help out with security if the scientists wanted to move something valuable, but I haven't heard jack about anything like that, ma'am. Maybe if they had told us..." Williams' shoulders pulled back, and Havil saw the Sergeant's grip on her rifle tighten.

"Williams," in an instant, Havil put centimeters between her visor and the woman's. Williams' brown eyes had no where else to look. "Stay in the now. We have a job to do." When Williams' breathing evened out, Havil took a step back. Pink's posture loosened. "Sergeant, where would they take the artifact?"

Williams tipped her head back toward a ramp with red rivulets sluicing down it. "Transport ramp. Too much rock here to dig through, and they didn't want to blow it for fear of damaging the ruins. Supply platform is up and over."

As Havil neared the apex of the ramp, she tucked into a crouch, then into a crawl, and finally lowered herself on her right side and rolled prone in the mud, cushioning her with a sickening softness. When she went to dig her palm in it, the red oozed between the fingers of her gloves. What she didn't hear were the Marines behind her, who were silently doing the same. With her rifle shipped, she wormed herself to where she could just see over the other side. The nearly sleepless night, incessant rain, and threat of live fire took her back to basic. "Keep your head down if you want to keep it, Recruit!" rang through her memories. Yes, sir.

She slid a hand down in the mud to grab her scope from her tactical belt. In the depressed area below, a large bowl, stood a docking platform stacked with crates. Dead Geth and Humans had been flung about, but no pikes. She scanned for the...wait. Movement. She caught the pointy outline of a dark Turian head crest. Nihilus was already there, surveying the damage.

He was faster by himself. She was about to give Alenko and Williams the all clear when another Turian sauntered up to the Spectre. He patted Nihilus on the shoulder, and Nihilus holstered his rifle and turned to a crate with his omni-tool sheathing his arm. She saw the impact before she heard the shot.

*Bam.*

The back of Nihilus' armor gaped open in a dark blue hole. A shotgun dangled loosely from the other Turian's hand. Havil spun on her belly to signal her team, but as she did the top slope of the ramp collapsed around her into a river of mud. Her position blown, she shouted to Alenko and Williams in case they hadn't already started down after her. Havil tumbled with the slide, twisting back to clutch her rifle. Burial she could survive in her armor. A point blank shotgun blast she would not.

When the mud coughed her up at the bottom of the basin, Havil threw the last of its momentum into a forward tuck into a crate near the platform. She popped up over it with her rifle, covered with mud but extended and ready, and found no one. Alenko and Williams were indeed picking their way quickly but carefully down after her.

"You alright?" Alenko asked. Williams continued to secure the platform.

"Yeah. Did you see a Turian?" she asked them when they arrived.

"Uh, yes ma'am, he left at a run when you, ah," he looked her up and down, finishing with a wave of his hand.

Only then did Havil noticed her armor was completely coated with red sludge. She dug some out of an elbow joint with a finger and flicked it to the ground. "Williams?"

"The only Turian here's dead."

"Nihilus," Havil explained. "Alenko, secure the end of the platform where our mystery Turian left."

She was unsuccessfully checking Nihilus for effects and some kind of message or orders, when she heard a high, nasal voice complaining, "Hey, hands off me! Get off!"

Williams dragged a young man into the open. "Commander."

The man's had the muscular hands and forearms, oil-spattered overalls of a laborer. More importantly, he was having difficulty meeting her with his dilated pupils and bloodshot eyes: a duster just now jerked back to reality. She grabbed him roughly by the straps of his overalls. "What happened here?"

The man's voice cracked. "The Turian shot the other one. That's all I know." He squirmed under her grasp. "The dead one called his friend Saren."

"And before that?"

"I, I just dozed off...'' his eyes widened as he saw Williams checking the crates where he had been.

"Commander!" Williams shouted, holding up assault rifles with clear Systems Alliance stenciling. Pink vaulted over the crate, twisted the man's arms roughly behind his back, and kicked out his legs. He crumpled to the platform decking. She drove a knee into his back and drew back a fist. "Those should be in the garrison armory, you rotten-"

"Sergeant Williams." Shepard said quietly but firmly, leveling a gaze at the younger woman until she stood. He curled into a ball. "Listen," Havil knelt on one knee. "Williams here lost her whole troop coming to rescue civilians like you." She was inches from his face and her voice was calm, low, and steady, "And you have weapons those Marines-those dead Marines-could have used. Know something about that?"

"It... it doesn't matter," the man stuttered before screwing up his eyes and turning away.

A whole troop dead, and all they had saved was this smuggling coward. Havil's studied the man's face with involuntary fascination. The pores on his face oozed sweat, and by now he had reopened his reddened eyes, wide with fear. In the periphery of her vision, she caught the red dot of her helmet camera on her HUD.

"Williams, tie him up," Havil spat. Without turning her head, Havil pointed to an open, defenseless area near the front of the platform.

"Yes, ma'am." Williams answered with energy.

Havil herself locked the crate of rifles with N7-only routines from her omni-tool. No need to arm the enemy. The Alliance could impound it later as evidence. If the man survived, the Alliance would try him, and justice would prevail. On a planet of corpses, she had to admit the smuggler had a point. It didn't really seem like it mattered.

"And Williams," Havil looked not at Williams but where Alenko was standing guard, "what's over there?"

"Tram to second docking area. Done here."

"Then let's go. Double-time!"

In the relative safety of the covered tram, Shepard finally had time to regroup. The rain had tapered to a mist-to light to clean her armor. "We've seen mostly drones and husks. Anyone know much about fighting Geth?" she ventured to Alenko and Williams, who had taken posts to her right and left.

"Saw my first one today, ma'am," Alenko answered.

"I'd be happy to never see one again," Williams deadpanned.

"Alright, then, listen up. In N training we studied some Quarian blueprints for them. The one we encountered was the basic unit-bipedal, flex-neck flashlight head-" that got a low chuckle from Williams, "but the Quarians had larger ones for heavy labor, too." She patted her tactical belt, "So think armored unit tactics," she looked to Williams, "like grenades," she switched to Alenko, "and stasis fields, lifts, anything to keep them out of the fight until we can isolate them." The tram decelerated and clamped into place. "Ready?" She checked her loadout, opened her visor, and took a swig of water. She saw the other two do the same.

"Ready, ma'am," said Williams.

"Ready, Commander," followed Alenko.

"Let's get 'em." She flipped her visor back down and took point, with Williams in second and Alenko giving support. They worked their way down a long walkway studded with three-man Geth guards. Halfway down she was crouched behind a wall when she heard rushing air, followed by an explosion. "Rockets!" she shouted, though that was obvious. Two giant Geth with shoulder-mounted RPGs slowly marched their way, seemingly impervious to grenades, though somewhat slowed by biotics. Havil had to stay under cover and get shots in between blasts-a rocket hit and she'd be a molten mass, not a corpse. As she crouched, Havil felt the heaviness of the day's fighting drag into her legs. The fatigue, the mud still covering her, and the heat and fire of the rockets started roiling memories she didn't want to see. "Cover me, Williams. Alenko, tell me you've foud a way to sabotage!"

"Here goes!" was Alenko's not entirely reassuring reply.

She shipped her rifle and stepped out into the aisle and felt again the pressure of the air around her and the planet's gravity pulling down through her heels. Havil threw the energy and her own weight on one of the Geth units easily twice her height. The sudden shift of gravitational force toppled both Geth. She quickly reached for her shotgun and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. In a split second, Havil realized she had hit Alenko's burst mid-charge, and her own weapons were useless. Hand to hand they'd rip her in two like a butcher cleaning fowl. Williams and Alenko were too far behind. Then as the first Geth sat up to recover, Havil rode the flow of intuition. She lunged at the hoses behind its head where it couldn't aim, grasping them like the rope on a steer as the Geth prepared to stand. It came to Havil that they might be vital, some kind of spinal cord. In one fluid motion she grabbed her combat knife from her leg sheath and sawed through them. The Geth reared backwards, and her vision swam for a moment as it smacked her helmet-first into the ground. She wrapped her arms around its neck, and as it Geth tried again to stand, she plunged the knife into its light port, which sparked. Suddenly, a loud shot boomed. Pinned under her quarry, she could felt the walkway shudder as the second Geth come crashing down next to her with a clatter.

Havil's arm hairs raised with the sensation of a biotic field interacting with the one she was attempting to issue from her trapped hand. As she relaxed, a lift shifted the robot so she could roll clear. Then it, too, banged to the ground. Wary of shock, she checked her omni-tool but found no significant injuries.

The second Geth on the other hand, had caught a round with its light-eye.

"I owe you one," she told Williams, who had just sprinted up, sniper rifle in hand. Alenko was right behind.

"Sniper rifle certification, ma'am." Williams said with a smile as she swapped the long gun for her assault rifle, "first in class."

"I believe it, Sergeant."

More Geth patrolled the second docking area. As they scrambled again for cover, she heard Alenko. "Commander. Problem." He scooted in so they were shoulder to shoulder behind a crate and pointed to a readout on his omni-tool. "Bombs."

"Bombs, Alenko?"

"Yes Commander, four. Marking them on your map now."

"Take Williams, clean up the Geth and keep them off me."

"Commander?" the tech specialist challenged. He caught her eyes, and she felt the unwelcome rush of shame, the tingling of guilt at the base of her brain for Jenkins, the 212th, and so many more. What she needed was the consuming and delicate task of disarming the bombs, something cold, mechanical.

"Go, go, Alenko! Give me some cover!" she yelled in his surprised face. She didn't give him time to argue, immediately running to the first device. A scan with her omni-tool failed to pick up any network signals, so it was on a timer, not a remote. With this many Geth around, she probably had some time, unless they were planning to blow their own, which, Havil thought, might be logical for synthetics. The bomb itself was simple-a detonator plunged between two spheres of material obviously potently explosive when combined with enough force. She used her knife to unscrew the detonator's housing, finding a simple rod. If she was right, and it was this straightforward, the Geth weren't expecting company this soon. If she was wrong... Havil sheathed her knife and slowly drew the detonator up. Sweat ran down her nose and dripped on the inside of her visor. It was clear. Havil stood, pulled her rifle, and threw the detonator high with a biotic push. With a round of her rifle, it exploded in the air.

Havil disarmed the other three similarly, paying no attention to the ongoing fight. As she withdrew the last detonator, she finally listened, and heard only silence. Glancing up, she saw Alenko watching her progress as Williams ensured the various Geth around the platform were deactivated. She felt the come-down from her adrenaline rush, and hesitated. "Do the honors, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, Commander." He unholstered his pistol and braced to fire. She flung the detonator out away from the platform like a clay pigeon. He only needed one shot.

"Thanks. Good work today. You too, Williams," Havil called.

Havil finally turned to the artifact. A narrow, dark stone pillar stood tall in the middle of the intended blast area; someone didn't want them to see it... or any of the surrounding 5 miles of terrain, which would include the other platform, the dig site, and part of the colony proper. The beacon had a faint green glow in a channel down its center, and when she focused she thought she heard it giving off a quiet hum. Rubbing her fingers on her hand together where she had been shocked, Havil gave it a wide berth.

She pulled off her mud-caked helmet, stuffed her gloves inside, and wiped the sweat from her face with her real hand. Williams sagged a bit with exertion, but took up position at the entrance to the docks, just in case. Alenko had holstered his pistol and was grabbing an energy bar. They were tired, but still cautious until the Normandy confirmed all synthetic enemies were clear. She snapped her shotgun in place across her lower back and finally radioed Anderson.

"Shepard to Normandy."

"Normandy here, Commander. Report," came Anderson's voice in her earpiece.

"Primary objective complete, sir. The beacon is secure. Jenkins and Nihilus are casualties and will need retrieval, recommend hazmat and forensic teams. The 212 is KIA except Sergeant Ashley Williams, present. Ground team ok for now. One civilian waiting for pick-up at the smaller docking platform. Many more are dead, sir."

"What the-" Anderson sounded tired.

"Geth, sir. Maybe you should see for yourself." Havil tapped on her omni-tool. "Uploading helmet footage now, Captain."

"10-4, ground team. Stand by to assist with transport of the beacon."

"Aye-aye, sir."

Eden Prime's sun had just broken through the clouds near the horizon, beating the dark metal cargo platform and the now pungent mud on her armor. Suddenly thirsty and fatigued, she looked up into her second canteen, unable to conjure any spare drops of electrolyte-enhanced juice, special battle rations for biotics. She put one hand to her earpiece and was just turning back to describe the artifact for an Engineer Adams, adding in a request for water, when she noticed Alenko had stopped to study it. He cut an athletic, but lithe figure in his light armor, though its black was probably starting to heat in the sun. That might explain Williams's white armor-if not the pink joints underneath. Havil found herself continuing to look as he crouched slightly to look more closely at the beacon's base.

Suddenly the beacon glowed, and the faint hum she had heard was now rattling her skull. Alenko's hands went to his helmet in pain, and his feet kept skidding closer to it. She dropped her helmet: not another one today. An attempted charge fizzled in blue sparks at her fingertips as she ran and physically tackled him around the waist, half rolling, half throwing him away from it. With her shields and barrier inactive, the impact of his armor knocked the breath out of her. Before she could crawl away, she felt the same force tugging at her entire body and suddenly her feet weren't on the ground, her back was arched, and her eyes were on the sky.

Flashes of experience filled her senses: grief, death, and fear, machines and tissues... She couldn't scream or shut her eyes. Mercifully, all went black.


	6. Chakwas

Dr. Karin Chakwas pulled the EEG monitors from the Commander’s forehead. Her patient gave a quiet stir, but trapped in the atonia of a deep sleep cycle, she didn't yet wake. Chakwas quietly stowed the monitors under the bed and returned to her station to review Shepard's readings. While the Commander's brain activity was largely within normal parameters outside of REM sleep, when she was dreaming the scans indicated significant stress and negative arousal to perceived environmental stimuli. The wave forms chaotically zigzagged across the screen. Also troubling to Chakwas was the large proportion of time the Commander was spending in REM sleep. Either she was habitually sleep-deprived or the beacon had some psychological effect. Given Alenko's report of headache when the beacon started physically manipulating him, Chakwas couldn't rule out adverse psychological factors. Then again, the Systems Alliance didn't regularly run sleep analyses on its personnel, so Chakwas didn't have a baseline for comparison. 

She tapped her chin absently until she realized she was not alone. Though he claimed not to be suffering ill-effects from the beacon, Alenko was leaning against the wall near the door. She spun her chair and considered him with a small frown. Ever since he carried the fully armored Commander to the med bay in his arms and laid her on the bed himself, Alenko had been a regular fixture, often playing with his hands or running them through his hair in a series of unconscious, if not involuntary, nervous tics.

"Any news, Doctor?" he asked. She saw a tightness in his brows and noted the pallor of his skin. The L2 biotic desperately needed rest uninterrupted by checking on Shepard. Losing sleep over soldiers' health, Chakwas mused, was her job, not his.

"No, Lieutenant. But she'll be fine. The Commander isn't in a coma---she's just in need of a tremendous amout of rest. As," she turned her most obviously professionally stern gaze upon him, "do you. And I'd rather not order it."

Rather than hold her stare, he told the floor, "It should be me there. I, I... She pushed me out of the way."

"Lt. Alenko," Chakwas modulated into her calming and motherly tone, "it's over, and as I said, she'll be fine. Now I think it would be best for you if you---" She was interrupted by an alert from her monitor. "Tell the Captain that Shepard will be awake soon." At least he'd be useful, she thought as he hurried out the door to the Captain’s quarters, just across the narrow deck.

Shepard's body was indeed fine; her physical examination revealed a perfectly healthy soldier with the scars and fractures concurrent with her service record. The fight on the planet hadn’t added to those, thankfully, though it left some significant bruising on her torso and down her left leg. The real question as she now gently asked her patient, was, "How do you feel?"

Shepard blinked a few times in the dimmed light, and put her hand to her pistol hip. Disappointed, apparently, she closed her eyes again, breathed deeply, and then deliberately looked ay Chakwas. "Doctor?" 

"Dr. Karin Chakwas. You're aboard the Normandy." Shepard tested her fingers and feet---a paralysis and amputation check, Chakwas noted grimly---and then Chakwas detected a faint and momentary biotic glimmer in the Commander's hand.

Only after her personal inventory of ability and cautious evaluation of her surroundings did the Commander answer in a small and hoarse voice, "Fine. Pretty bad headache, though." Shepard then checked under the sheet. Given Shepard's deep sleep, Chakwas had Williams help her remove the Commander's armor and underlayer and put on a fresh set of BDUs. Satisfied, Shepard continued, "Permission to---" Chakwas braced an arm for Shepard to hold and and helped the soldier slowly sit up. Shepard winced and then eased off the bed, which she slumped against as she shaded her eyes from the med bay lights.

"You know, Commander," the Doctor tried to sound offhand while handing Shepard a cup of water, "I noticed elevated eye-movement and brain activity while you were out. You... didn't have any dreams?"

She watched Shepard raise her eyes to meet her own, as if to ask the Doctor how much she could be trusted. "Yes, I..." Shepard replied, shaking her head slowly and bowing it again, clearly uneasy, either with the dreams, or with not having a clear answer. "There's too much there. I can't hold it, keep it still. All I have is a feeling. Just death... so, so much death."

Coming from someone with Shepard's history, Chakwas could only wonder what an overwhelming amount of death might look like. Chakwas was going to lay a reassuring hand on Shepard's forearm, but seeing the woman tense at the impending contact, withdrew it. "Well," she advised her patient from a respectful distance, "the headache should clear. You have a mild concussion from hitting the ground without your helmet, and perhaps the beacon had an effect as well. If you have more visions, please alert me. Otherwise, I prescribe rest, plenty of water, and food if you can tolerate it. These," she handed the Commander two small tablets, "should take care of the pain."

Shepard accepted the pills, but didn't immediately down them. "How long was I out, Doctor?" she asked, again shading her eyes.

"It's been 15 hours. The artifact had some kind of effect on you. Unfortunately, we won't be able to study it. You appeared to have destroyed it."

"I..." Shepard screwed her eyes closed for a moment and rubbed her forehead, "If I remember correctly," Chakwas noted Shepard was slow to recall, "it was pulling Alenko with a field. He hadn't even touched it. If that's all, permission to go, Doctor?"

"Actually, Commander, I believe the Captain wants to speak with you first, as long as you're up for it?" Shepard nodded. "If you eat a meal and get another shift of sleep, I can release you to light duty. No combat for at least the next 48 hours. Then I'll reevaluate you under concussion protocol. And come see me if the pain intensifies." 

Hearing the medbay door open, Chakwas put herself in Anderson's path. She was a small woman, but medical officers held power. "Captain," she urged, "the Commander is stable, but aside from her combat injuries, the beacon had a significant effect on her mind. Is there any way this can wait?"

Anderson was gruff. He looked down at her. "No, Doctor, it can't. The Council needs answers, and they need them now." 

"Fine." Chakwas put her hands on her hips, "but I will end your conversation if I have to." She pointed meaningfully to Shepard's vitals on her desk monitor.

Anderson glared hard at her a moment, but eventually turned to sidestep by her. She had won that round. 

Anderson's phrases came in a short, intense cadence. "The beacon destroyed, Nihilus dead, and a human colony overrun by Geth. Well, Shepard, not exactly the show we wanted to put on for the Council."

Shepard had pushed herself off the bed to attention, despite what Chakwas knew was the level of pain involved. "Have you seen the footage, sir?"

"Yes, and it's a damn good thing we have it, Commander. Though some of your decisions, well, unorthodox is too good a word. But that can wait. What I---"

"Maybe if you had given me proper briefings on my squad, Nihilus, and the dig site, you wouldn't be second-guessing me in the medbay." Shepard drew out her insubordination just long enough before adding, "Captain." Her heart rate and blood pressure ticked up just slightly.

"I'll let that go, Commander, because the Doctor here is watching us closely. Nihilus had the ultimate authority designing the mission and setting its parameters." Anderson had leaned in to Shepard. Chakwas was willing to bet his vitals were also rising.

"And that earned him passage in the cargo bay with Jenkins."

Anderson backed off and took a deep breath. "What I need to know, Commander, is what happened after you broke protocol by removing your helmet. When you dropped it, it spun away from the beacon, which is now destroyed, and that doesn't look good for you, your team, or humanity in general, especially with Nihilus dead."

Chakwas wished he could have waited until Shepard had some rest, but the risk of conflict seemed to be over as Shepard leaned back against the bed to start, "I had just finished reporting to you and was going to comm Adams about the transport..."

Chakwas let her eavesdropping go and focused on Shepard's brain scans. Despite the Commander's claims, she was not fine. A small beep at her monitor confirmed she had been cleared to view Shepard's unredacted psych profile. The woman had not been fine for quite some time.


	7. Shepard

When Anderson had finally left, Shepard let the two pills rattle around the bottom of the small paper cup the Dr. Chakwas had handed her. Her head pounded as if she had rammed a Krogan's cranial plate, but she had needed a clear mind, to tell off Anderson. Were it not for the aura warning against exertion, movement, and just about everything else, she had even considered revisiting her decision to avoid taking him on hand-to-hand.

It wasn't, Havil thought as she gathered herself, that she cared about being sent on a fool's errand. It's that she again didn't die on it when someone else did. She climbed into her pain for a moment, familiarizing herself with each bruise, sore muscle, and aching joint. The throbbing of her head washed over it all in pulses timed with her heartbeat. Even in the midst of the pain, memories emerged unbidden---scenes that were and weren't hers: screams and death rattles, shrieks of ships crashing down, fire singeing flesh that also flash froze in space. She braced herself against the bed. Havil could neither drown the images with pain nor push them away with the present. The pills were briefly bitter on her tongue.

Anderson and Chakwas hushed an animated conversation as she passed---doubtless discussing her, as there's no medical privacy for the soldier---but Havil didn't bother trying to sort their voices from her own inner din. Thankfully, the mess was darkened in off-hours, lit by dim red emergency floor lights and soft white shafts from the medbay windows. Chakwas was right; she had to eat after 15 hours out, or she'd wake up in worse shape. Rummaging earned her a few ration bars and an electrolyte drink.

The familiar haze of heavy painkillers overtook her, and she felt all her muscles suddenly fill with lead. When she turned to sit, Havil's aching brain slowly processed a dark mass with longish sideburns. Alenko was sitting in the dark mess alone.

He wasn't eating.

He'd been waiting for her.

"Lieutenant," she sighed as she poured herself into a chair.

"Commander, listen, I, uh, wanted to apologize about the beacon." After stealing a brief glance at her, he scratched at one of the sideburns and addressed the air in front of him. "I was going to take a look and must have set something off, a security measure or something. You pushed me out of the way." He sheepishly looked to her again, awaiting her reply while tapping his fingers on the table.

Chakwas's pain meds were good, but not so much so that Havil didn't recognize the expression she so often wore herself. His eyebrows drew together at an upward slant, putting the muscles of his forhead in relief. He tilted his head slightly downwards as he looked up at her. It was guilt. Guilt because it should have been him. Havil struggled to chew a chunk of the dry ration bar. After a few attempts mashing it with her teeth, she realized she could soften it with the drink. As she swirled the orange flavored liquid into the grainy piece of bar, Havil thought that she did not want his pile of guilt. Each tap of his finger drummed into the now distant but still rhythmic pulsing of her brain. If she did not destroy the guilt now, he would bring it up again, *tap* and again,*tap* and again, *tap* and each time it would heap up more and more guilt upon itself, eventually tumbling down with a deadly crash. If guilt were a mountain subject to landslides, perhaps the painkillers were stronger than Havil initially thought.

"It's not like you stepped up to it and switched it on," Havil's voice sounded as she vividly imagined a small mound of dirt exploding sideways under the impact of her shovel. "You couldn't have known, Sideburns, that it was going to do whatever it did."

Alenko's eyebrows shot up in surprise. He scratched at a sideburn again for reasons Havil couldn't fathom, considering he had just been poking at it earlier. She hoped, somewhere, that itchiness and blushing were side effects of having guilt blown away, not that she'd know, both for the keeping of guilt and the inability to grow sideburns herself. "Commander, how are you feeling?" she heard him ask.

"I've been better. Jenkins," she remembered with a slow breath. The responsibility fell on her shoulders with weight. She was in no shape to record the video message, dirt guilt piles and all. "I still have to notify his family."

"That wasn't your fault, Commander," Alenko was still peering at her strangely, though it could have been residual guilt, she decided. He had stopped tapping and taken to rubbing his fingers on his thumb. "And maybe you should, uh, get some rest first."

"I look that bad, huh? Thanks, Lieutenant, but I'm still responsible." She tossed a few imaginary grains on her own mountain. "Do you know what happened to Sgt. Williams?"

"Not bad, ma'am," Alenko stuttered out, "but tired. Captain transferred Williams here. She's probably wiping mud off our weapons and armor." Havil suddenly remembered Williams' armor was pink. Or were just parts of it pink?

"Good. Pink's a good soldier. I think I'll..." She tried to stand, but the room moved. She closed her eyes for a second and reached for a mess chair to steady herself. "Lieutenant, go..." she was determined not to embarrass herself in front of him, "...go check on Williams. She lost too many friends today."

"Do you need---" he was halfway out of his own chair when she cut him off with a dismissive hand wave.

"No. I'm fine. Go. Now." Havil tried a serious stare, which must have worked. She gripped the chair back until he hurried to the elevator, from which he continued his odd look, and then she shuffled to an unoccupied sleeping pod. The reflection on the vertical coffin-like contraption's glass cover danced in her eyes as it cracked open.

Havil stepped in and felt her stomach flip as the pod clamped shut and slid under the decking. Geth, a Spectre, Prothean technology---her first mission on the Normandy defied her medicinally altered mind's attempt to piece it all together. The vision didn't help. Every time she closed her eyes, as she did now, it was there, but only in fragments. She couldn't shove them away, but she couldn't hang on to them to make sense of them either. She snatched at scream here, a shout there, the flash of fire, but they all eluded her. She felt her breathing slow and deepen and her muscles relax. Chakwas had given her a sedative. Of course she had. Clever. Soon the heaviness of sleep overtook Havil.


	8. Tevos

When Ambassador Tevos cut the holo signal to the Citadel chambers, the spotlights over her, the Sparatus, and Valern faded out, and the room's sconces filled the room with warm indirect light that emphasized the pale wooden curves of luxury Thessian design. The private Council room here in the heart of the Destiny Ascension was so heavily shielded and isolated and so thoroughly Asari that Tevos sometimes felt the door would open with a burst of salt-laden air and warm sunlight to a patio overlooking a quiet ocean on her home world.

For a few moments after the necessarily public spectacle of backing Saren, a Concil agent, against the charges of the dramtic and hotheaded Human Ambassador, Donnell Udina, Tevos and her fellow Council members, Sparatus and Valern moved from their podia to their chairs in silence.

When neither Sparatus nor Valern spoke, Tevos slightly lifted a hand, sending each Councilor's aide scurrying to the door. A tap on the floating orange panel before her ensured complete privacy. No one could listen in to their conversation, and no recording device could smuggle their words out. Once the panel glowed green, the Turian Ambassador, Sparatus, began, "I find it difficult to believe Saren is leading an army of Geth, of all things. His methods can be," he threw up two three-fingered hands, "coldly efficient, but he's always served the interests of the Council."

"Brutal is more like it," Tevos frowned. "The trail of carnage he leaves is disgusting." She suppressed a gesture of disgust as she remembered images accompanying his last report. Scattered lumps of what looked like charcoal would require molecular analysis to determine their original species.

"You Asari never have liked getting your blue hands dirty," Sparatus returned, his sea green eyes aglow. "Saren just does what is necessary, and Spirits, he is good at it."

"And Nihilus?" Tevos asked. She didn't need access to the Hierarchy's lineage database to tell her the Turian Ambassador and dead Spectre were of the same clan. It was written all over their black and white faces.

Sparatus' sub-harmonics shifted. At the edge of her hearing, Tevos detected a note of sadness. "I do find it difficult to believe that one would kill the other. I find it even less likely that a Human could challenge either Saren or Nihilus."

A knock at the door prevented further anti-Human sentiment. Tevos cleared entry for an aide, who dropped off a datapad for Ambassador Valern and quickly withdrew. The Salarian's hood cast a deep shadow over his features as he summarized, "STG has just verified the Human's video log. Her report---accurate---but the kill shot was filmed at great distance." Sparatus grunted, but Valern's reedy voice continued, "Video enhancement suggests both Turian shooter and victim. Saren," the Salarian's eyelids flipped up briefly as he lifted his head, "is quite possibly involved."

Tevos didn't want to outvote Sparatus. Valern would follow data, but Sparatus was more sentimental, though Turians themselves didn't see their honor culture as really wrapped up in romantic notions of pride and honor that stem, ultimately, from controlling and diverting deep wells of passion. Turian treachery at such a level was unheard of, and if announced without the right spin, Palaven would burn in riots. According to Asari projections, a significant economic and military disruption in Turian space would trigger short-term distress among the Council races. Worse, however, was the long-term problem of the Hierarchy weakened by shame, and how they would overcompensate against the Humans, who like beakfish at injured coral were always prodding Council insecurities for their own gain. She needed the Turian Ambassador. "If the video has just now been verified," she glanced at Valern, who nodded, "then it would seem that the Humans, at the very least, are not to blame for Nihilus' death, or for the loss of the beacon."

Before Sparatus could agree to that small fact, Valern quickly added, "Though we should not underestimate them as not capable of it. Humans are in fact extremely effective, despite Turian experience. They demonstrate innovative small team tactics against superior forces. Shepard particularly," Valern added with technical excitement, continuing into some statistical measures on Shepard's career that Tevos didn't care to follow. Tevos could clearly see from the video that the woman in combat was a rushing stream dancing around stones.

Realizing Valern was still spouting numbers, she inwardly groaned. Because Salarians were so short-lived, they got caught up in what they could pass on that wouldn't require interpretation---facts, data, statistics. Of the many Tevos had seen on the Council, Valern was even more tactless than most. Pressing the issue of a human Spectre would have to wait; the Geth were the real concern. "Commander Shepard's performance aside," she interjected, "we need to consider to possibility that if Saren was present, either he or Nihilus was involved with the Geth incursion, or one or both have been tracking this problem without alerting us."

"The Geth," Sparatus now threw himself into the back of his chair, "so far as we know have never allied with anyone, much less a Council Spectre. Has any species reported contact with them since they drove the Quarians from Rannoch?"

"No," Tevos remembered the reports of the Quarian flight from their homeworld. It was a fitting punishment for their hubris in creating artificially intelligent servants. "But certainly they are a threat, especially given how little we know of them and how quickly they neutralized the human military presence on Eden Prime."

"STG files are woefully inadequate on the Geth," Valern said, folding his hands on the table. "The units deactivate on death and wipe core memory. Little remains to retrieve. Scout ships from any species have been eliminated upon contact. I'd recommend extreme caution."

"On that we can agree. The humans' evidence of the Geth is indisputable," Sparatus said. Tevos relaxed her shoulders just slightly once he had taken the bait. "And the new ground forces they describe, husks, are very disturbing."

"Given how little we know," Tevos suggested, "a quiet build-up of ships and troops seems prudent at the very least. Until we can determine what intent the Geth have, we need to be ready to defend Citadel space against them." She touched her voting panel in assent to issuing such an order, and the other two followed. "As for their intent---"

"Surely you don't believe Shepard's account of some apocryphal vision?" Sparatus' mandibles flared.

"Functioning Prothean objects are extremely rare. Two documented instances in last 1000 years. Whatever Shepard may have experienced," as Valern paused, Tevos could see him calculating probabilities, "is unique."

"Indeed," Tevos quickly stepped in, "unique and unlikely to be helpful. Given the state of the beacon now, it's impossible to determine."

"Unless the humans sabotaged it directly after taking the data," Sparatus grumbled. "Shepard had removed her helmet during the time of the supposed activation." Tevos looked to Valern for assistance.

"Even so, it would be of little use to them. All Prothean data caches are fragmentary. Also humans lack ability to share direct memory," the Salarian gestured to her. "Shepard's vision is distressing, if true. Cycle of destruction fits some ancient archaeological theories, but there are too many unknowns. We need further data to even speculate."

"I must agree there as well. The Geth are an immediate and obviously extant threat. We'll bring the Citadel forces and," she glanced at her fellow Councilors, who nodded, "the Council race fleets to readiness slowly and quietly. We don't need panic. We'll see what STG can determine about possible human sabotage," she had to give Sparatus something, "as well as the recent activities of Saren, who despite his appearance via hologram today, hasn't been reporting in regularly." At this last fact, she pointedly looked to Sparatus.

"Fine," Sparatus answered, leaving his seat. "Good day, then. I'll get to work on the Turian fleet staging." He bowed to her and Valern and left. Tevos waited for the door to hiss shut.

"Valern," she asked, "what level of certainty does STG have that it was Saren in the video?"

"It's not definitive. Movement pattern and physical attributes initially registered only 50% likelihood." With his omni-tool, Valern generated the blurry holographic image of the Saren who had defended himself in their meeting. "However," the Salarian tapped his omni-tool and the several areas of the digital image blinked red, "if this is Saren, he's had extensive cybernetic alterations. New analysis from holographic data is possible, but it will take time, given the distortion."

Tevos rubbed at the tightness in her forehead. Saren held the Turian military's highest honors for bravery and service, including seat at Palaven's High Table. He had significant family connections in the Hierarchy and was as wealthy as an Asari noble. He was also one of their most trusted operatives, and Asari intelligence suspected he had recently been making significant investments in munitions, biotechnology, and shipyards. Of all the Spectres to go rogue, Saren was easily the most dangerous. He also despised humans and and their expansion in colonies beyond Council space. "I suppose you've already had STG agents checking in to him?"

The Salarian threw back his hood and mocked annoyance, "Of course I have. Discreetly. We have a promising lead."

"Good. We can't have any findings tracked back to us. We need to leak it quietly and carefully. Sparatus needs to hear about Saren from someone else."

"Did you have someone in mind?"

"Shepard," Tevos answered.

Valern blinked up for a moment and deeply inhaled. "She's a formidable fighter, and resourceful," he looked at her carefully with an inquisitively tilted head, "and likely suffering from a number of emotional and mental disorders."

"Yes," Tevos answered, "she is. If all goes well, we gain a Spectre. If not, well, then Humanity will have to wait, just as they did after Anderson."

"I see. Cunning as ever, Ambassador."

When he left, Tevos's aide entered. "Ambassador," the aide bowed deeply, "Her Most Esteemed, Matriarch T'amal is awaiting you via urgent video link."

Tevos breathed deeply to keep calm in front of the trembling maiden. "Thank you. That will be all." She gave a shallow nod to dismiss the attendant. Though it was not unusual for the Asari government to follow up on Council reports and issue guidance, in three hundred years of service as Ambassador, Tevos had only rarely spoken with the Grand Matriarch. Tevos meditated for a moment, imagining gentle waves meeting the Thessian shore. As the waves break and recede, break and recede, so does my fear. With a small smile, she stood, opened the comm link. Her forehead brushed the floor in her bow to the flickering image that appeared at the center of the room. "Matriarch T'amal, Your Most Esteemed, to what do I owe this deepest of pleasures?"

"Rise, Ambassador Tevos. I have received word that a human has accessed the Prothean beacon on Eden Prime. Is that correct?"

"Yes, Matriarch. Lieutenant Commander Havil Shepard of the Systems Alliance Navy appears to have been affected by the beacon. She reports having visions of generalized destruction, though she cannot be more precise. Unfortunately our footage of the incident is incomplete."

"I see. Young Tevos, is this a secure line and area?"

"Of course, Grand Matriarch. This is the Council's meeting room on the Destiny Ascension." Dread tingled at the tips of her crest.

"Good. I will then also require a solemn vow of secrecy from you, a vow only broken on pain of death to you, your bondmate, and anyone whom you tell and all with whom you may hence meld. Do you understand?"

Tevos swayed lightly for a moment, a seaplant shifting underwater. She had heard of the solemn vow, but never had seen one performed... or enforced. She also did not want to inquire about the consequences of refusing. She suddenly felt the tightness of the collar on her dress cutting around her neck. "Yes, Matriarch. I understand." Tevos bowed deeply again, this time with her arms crossed on her chest. "I do so vow."

When the Matriarch's feed finally fizzled out, Tevos fell into her seat. She did not know how long the waters had run by before she realized she was still at the Council's table. She tapped through the room's interface to ensure there was no record of what had happened. Then, tapping again, she opened a call.

"Tevos," a rich contralto sounded surprised, "it's been some time."

"We need to talk. "

"Oh?"

"Business, Matriarch." The other end of the line was silent. By the Goddess, Tevos thought, and then said, "Not that kind of business. I just spoke with Her Most Esteemed, T'amal."

"One hour," came Sha'ira's reply. "I'll send coordinates."

Tevos did not yet trust her legs to stand, but she disengaged the room's isolation mode. To the attendant who rushed in, she quietly ordered, "Get me Thess---, no, Human brandy. A bottle." She finally sank her head in her hands, not knowing how she was going to live with this for the next 300 years.


	9. Anderson

Anderson longed for his apartment in one of the Citadel's bustling wards, away from where he and Cynthia had lived and loved on Earth, away from the quiet Presidium lake where he and Kahlee had almost made the same mistake, away from the tall Council Chambers where Saren had stood and ended his career as a Spectre before it had even started. Shoulder to shoulder with to the icy Shepard during the Council's excuse for a hearing, he burned inside with anger and déjà vu. If Saren had bothered to show his scaled face instead of hiding behind a hologram, Anderson thought, he'd have throttled him before the C-Sec snipers high above could even get a shot off. While Ambassador Tevos again droned on about evidence, he warily glanced down, half expecting the petitioner's plank to collapse and dump him through the plastiglass atrium roof below, a last insult from a universe determined to grind him under its boot.

He sent Shepard off to gather her team, and failed to hail an aircar. He'd have to walk along the gently rippling lake, really a tree-lined reservoir running down the center of the massive Presidium torus. A snatch of Human Southern drawl brought his eyes from the artificial shore to scan the crowds. The memory of magnolia led him on with a craned neck and quick steps. Of course she wasn't here, not like his last audience before the Council. He'd tried sending messages a couple of times---her laugh had rung out as ordered him to keep in touch---but he'd never heard back.

His foolish chase made him early, and his legs carried him past Udina's office to the embassy lounge. Without a word his hand offered his credit chit and then grasped the cool glass. His tongue funneled the liquid down. He deserved it. A dark corner beckoned him, and he could have stayed, but Ambassador Donnell Udina wielded just enough power to make Anderson uncomfortably tug against the tightness of his dress blues. He had learned that last they met. The doors to the embassy lounge shut, burying its hubbub behind them.

Adrift in memory and momentum, Anderson nearly collided with Shepard.

"At ease, all of you," he ordered her, Alenko and Williams, letting protocol sober him.

Here in bright Presidium, Shepard's close cropped red hair, at the edge of the two inch limit, was spiky and unruly, the only disorder in her perfectly still, controlled pose and perfectly set dress blues. He smoothed his own.

"Shepard, unlike Nihilus I won't send you into this one blind." She returned the slightest eyebrow raise, but her lips remained firmly pressed together in, he thought, judgement. At least he had enough evidence to cover both of their asses this time, but that victory left his mouth dry when he considered Jenkins and the scans Chakwas had shown him. Now that he knew Saren was behind it... A tap of Shepard's foot reminded Anderson that she was still eyeing him, waiting. He could punch a wall, or a couple of Turians, in Saren's honor later.

For now, he needed to make damn sure his Spectre candidate didn't get shoved out the figurative airlock by Earthgov like he had. "This actually goes for all three of you, so listen up," Anderson felt the decking under him more solidly when he addressed Alenko and Williams, ducking Shepard's knowing gaze. "Udina might spout about Humanity, but he's in it for himself, for power. He probably believes he can squirm his way on to the Citadel Council or the Chancellorship. In his eyes, you---Shepard especially---are" Anderson closed his eyes to search for the term Udina had thrown at him, "inconvenient. He will do whatever it takes to sell you out and end your career."

"Understood, sir," Shepard said, betraying no surprise.

"Make sure you do, Commander." Anderson felt again uneasy by her impassiveness, so unlike his own reaction to Saren and the Council, and despite himself leaned in to whisper low, "Jenkins, Akuze, Mindoir---" At this last term her eyes fixed on his and narrowed, "the man will stoop at nothing. Be ready." Be ready because I wasn't, Anderson did not add.

"I said, understood, sir," Shepard matched his whisper, briefly turning away from his breath with a frown.

Before she could comment, he strode into Udina's office. The Ambassador barked, "Shepard, what were you thinking!"

"Ambassador," Shepard came to a rest in front Udina and stood coolly at attention. "What particular thoughts should I address? I've had several recently."

Anderson's mouth twisted into a wry smile as he watched the blood vessels in Udina's little neck pulse and color rise in his cheeks. The Ambassador had to raise his head to look at Shepard, and he shook his finger in her face. "You're a disgrace to that uniform and to failed on every count at Eden Prime, Shepard. Jenkins dead," he ticked a finger, "Nihilus dead," tick, "the artifact destroyed," tick, "and then that audience with the Council! The best thing you can do is take your screw-ups somewhere else... like," Udina bared his teeth in a grotesque smile, "Mindoir, with the outcast freaks where you belong."

"If I may speak freely?" Shepard asked so quietly Anderson could barely hear her. She now met the Ambassador's gaze. Udina continued his grin, confident of victory. "Your assessment of the mission is correct, Ambassador," Shepard continued. "I'm not sure what else you'd expect when a massive dreadnought unloads hundreds of Geth and you send three soldiers and a Spectre in unbriefed against enemies no one's seen for centuries. I regret none of my team's actions." Anderson's gut suddenly twisted with a spasm of pain, either from his drink or from hearing Eden Prime summarized so brutally, or both. He had sent her to die. He struggled to not double over while she radiated terrifying but bridled power just inches from Udina.

"You will, you will regret them," Udina replied, his smile now strained, "when I'm done with you. Anderson, a word in private?" Anderson signaled the three marines away to the balcony overlooking the Presidium, out of earshot.

"You're lucky you still have your head, Udina. I'd be happy to relieve you of it myself," Anderson growled.

"And you still have yours buried up Saren's ass, Anderson. Taking Shepard to see the Council yourself was idiocy. But don't worry. Your screw-up protege---she must have learned that from you---is too well-regarded in the military, and the media loves her story. A personal attack would seem petty, at least for now."

"I don't think her future is up to you." Anderson shifted his weight back to his heels. Udina didn't plan to ruin Shepard... yet. He still didn't trust the man further than he could throw him, though, Anderson considered, that distance was tantalizingly close to clearing Udina right over the balcony.

"That's because you don't think, Anderson. Nominating her? At least you," Udina's finger pressed hard on his chest, "have a heart. You could be broken and," Udina exaggerated an incriminating sniff, "used." As Anderson swatted away the offending digit, Udina continued, "But what's done is done. I need you and your crew to keep a low profile until I can get in front of the media on this. Just don't do anything stupid for a few days---I know that's a lot to ask from you---and I'll have you all transferred, quietly."

Anderson tightened his hand into his fist, feeling the pull of his skin against his knuckles and the muscles of his forearm tense. Udina unfortunately ignored him.

Anderson could end him silently now, he thought, at least twelve different ways. Despite Udina's machinations, Anderson was still special ops' finest. The N7 levels existed because he had broken so many SA performance records that they needed to invent new ones for him. He flexed his shoulders, reminding himself of his own physical prowess, only a little dimmed in middle age. Because Udina and the rest of Earthgov made certain his career stalled out at Captain, he knew all about power plays and back-room deals.

As satisfying as decking Udina might be, right now Anderson needed Shepard busy, off his case and building a reputation and alliances outside Udina's grasp. He stood at her shoulder as she looked over the balcony to the Presidium below and shivered. "Commander," he began. Even as he issued orders, he felt again Udina's stout finger jabbed into his sternum and heard the man's words-broken and used. Udina couldn't, Anderson thought as he turned to see the figure gesticulating wildly at some video correspondent, have stuck his fingers that far into Anderson's affairs, could he? He needed a clean terminal, an encrypted channel, and a message. It was that last, Anderson knew, that would be the hardest.


	10. Williams/Alenko

"Wow," Ashley Williams whispered under her breath as she and Alenko approached the balcony in Udina's office. "What a dingface. He sure does have a nice view, though." From the railing, she could just discern the ring of the Presidium. Ashley had spent most of her service time boots on the ground, so when Joker had announced the Normandy's docking approach, she'd hurried to the cockpit. The pilot's smile, show of stretching his fingers for the haptic maneuvering controls, and "Watch this, sister..." convinced her that he liked having an audience. What drew Ashley's eye was not the graceful arc of the ship's approach, carefully calibrated to the Citadel's rotation, but station's sheer size.

From space, the Citadel looked like an immense satellite, with five arrays slightly curved in a broken cylinder attached to this torus. With a burst of vertigo, she saw the central lake of the Presidium glistening below, surrounded with evenly spaced trees and elevated walkways crisscrossing to either side. Shops and offices peeked out of the opposite wall, and a fake blue sky beamed above. Maybe, she thought, Eden Prime's sky had been just that shade, before. All she could remember of the planet now was the red mud she'd spent the last day prying out of every crevice of the squad's armor---still faintly visible in her fingernails, she now noticed---and that everyone she had danced with, laughed with, drunk with, and done endless perimeter sweeps with was dead, some of them as husks dead twice over. Donkey was an actual ass sometimes, especially at the bar, but he when he wasn't drunk he saw her skills as a solider first and her family legacy second. He'd died covering her retreat so she and the comm man, Rasputin, could call for help.

Williams felt a moment of sinking dread when she realized a minute had passed without Alenko replying to her colorful assessment of the jerk Udina. Her sisters would be wide-eyed and curious about working with a biotic. She could hear their questions in the weekly family call now: is he blue tinged like an Asari? Can he lift things with his mind? Can you tell if you kiss him? Observing him, she realized she didn't know much about the man off the battlefield except that he had long sideburns and an extraordinary posterior whose firmness she was currently resisting the urge to test. And he clearly hadn't heard a word she said; Alenko was raptly watching the Commander, who had staked out her own position away from them to gaze into the distance.

"You, uh, think the Commander's ok?" she asked, following what she guessed were Alenko's thoughts. "Lieutenant?" she wasn't sure he had heard her this time, either.

"Um," Alenko was flustered and hastily added, "Honestly, Chief, I don't know. I thought maybe at the docks..." he trailed off. "But if Udina raked me over the coals like that, especially that bit about Mindoir..." he shook his head. A rule follower, Ashley realized: justice, honor, and all that. She'd learned that you don't get what you deserve, but in rare cases, you can try to make sure others do. It was just too bad that sander at the docks had survived. Shepard had the right idea there.

"That was bait. And Shepard's too smart to take it. I bet Udina'd like nothing more than to have her sock him and get dumped from the Alliance on dishonorable discharge." Williams had tried to sound casual, but an edge of bitterness escaped her. She hated politicians as a rule, and meeting Udina certainly cemented she was right.

"Huh. You sound like, well," Alenko paused and studied her, "like you've dealt with that before."

Williams returned the favor and took a good look at Alenko, whose open face and brown eyes revealed only concern and quiet intensity. He obviously didn't know about her family. She tucked a loose bang behind her ear. Given the years of dead-end assignments she'd faced, Williams forgot sometimes that her Grandfather's name wasn't branded on her forehead or in her service record. She frowned, "Something like that, yeah." The question she saw forming on Alenko's lips mercifully died away as Shepard joined them, her face impassive. Williams let out the breath she didn't know she had been holding.

"Unless either of you fancies waiting around for Udina to notice we're still here," Shepard glanced up at them both, and Williams mouthed a *hell, no,* "we have orders to do basic diplomatic liaising with the species here on the Citadel."

"You are effing kidding me, right, Commander? We have to go chat up more politicians like that one?" Williams used a select finger to indicate Udina. "I'd rather jump in the lake and get wet 'n' sandy."

Alenko put his hand to his chin like a damn professor. "What's the objective of these orders, Commander?"

Williams watched Shepard calculating her response. They had fought together, though, and honesty won out. "Partly Anderson running interference, so we don't get shipped out today. But unofficially, the Captain believes if Saren was involved in Eden Prime, some of the officials around here have to have intel on it. And he also thinks they might be more sympathetic to the ground team, personally affected by the fight, than they would be to Udina, or, for reasons he won't tell me, to himself."

"At least some of those reasons seem pretty obvious, Commander," Alenko said.

"Like being a dumbass, just say it, Lieutenant," Williams didn't have time for pansy footing around. Alenko sighed. "You can give me orders, ma'am, but I don't know anything about protocol. I'm not an officer like your fancy selves, in case you haven't noticed," Williams protested with a mock salute. The last thing she wanted to do today was play nice with a bunch of aliens. A drink, a dance, and a gun to shoot and clean were all she needed, though she wouldn't say no to a little more than a dance, either.

"Just don't blow anything up, and you'll be fine. But, since you don't have the training, let's divvy things up this way. Williams, you take..." Shepard gestured to a small map on her omni-tool interface, "the head of C-Sec and Barla Von's information brokerage."

"Aye-aye, Commander. Spikes and 'mallows coming up." Williams regretted her quip under Shepard's uncomfortably long stare. The guys and gals on Eden Prime would have roared-impromptu nicknames for aliens like Turians and Volus was a grunt specialty.

"Alenko," Shepard continued, "You do have basic diplomatic training," she had turned the phrase up into a question, and he nodded, "so I want you to take the Elcor and Volus office and the Salarians. That leaves me with the Turians, Asari, and," she heaved a long sigh, "the Hanar."

"This one is glad not to be of service there," Williams sympathized with her best false officiousness. Again Shepard's stare was heavy. "Okay, okay. But don't tell me that sigh was because you're looking forward to it."

"No Chief, I can't say I am. Shooting, dodging, watching friends die, that's what I'm good at." Williams winced to hear Shepard again so matter of factly summarize their last mission. "But orders are orders. Meet and greet, introduce yourselves, see if you can pick up on interests or needs. We'll rendezvous to debrief and hit the second half of our orders in the embassy lobby at 1800."

\--------------------

Williams was headed over to Executor Pallin's C-Sec office on the side of the non-Council races, and Alenko and Shepard had decided to start in the other wing. Walking beside her was like fighting beside her; Her movements were powerful but acrobatic, as when she'd take three steps on a one legged spring. She felt dangerous, efficient, and as they silently progressed, cold, too cold. Kaidan was still embarrassed from their first conversation, not to mention the nickname she had let slip. He rubbed a side burn. He had to apologize for being unprofessional, but she had made an art of not giving him an opening, keeping her face set forward and avoiding conversation. "Commander, is---" he tried, and without thinking about it, lightly laid a hand on her forearm.

She froze instantly, and he immediately feared she might break his hand or, from the charge he felt building, biotically slam him through the wall. "Yes, Lieutenant?" she spoke with the same quiet voice she had given Udina. It twisted his insides. Her green eyes were hard, brows furrowed.

"I, uh," he retreated quickly from his plan, "I don't suppose you'd be willing to trade the Asari for the Salarians?" He finished with a weak smile.

As her eyes bored into his, his feet rooted to the floor. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of his neck.

Finally she bristled in a voice so low only he could hear, "Lieutenant Commander Alenko," the formality hit him squarely, "No. I will not." Her words hung in the air between them. "Salarian females are statistically rare; aside from the Dalatrass, you won't find many here. The males in the delegation will respond better to you. Just as I will do better than you with the Asari."

Kaidan found that last phrase devastatingly ambiguous. They carried on in silence. The biotic strength she kept in reserve, that could faintly detect even walking at her side, and that he had felt ready to course through her arm, that he had watched flow around her in action intoxicated him. He hadn't felt a woman's aura next to him like that, well, since Rahna. Oppressed by the weight of memories and Shepard's ire, it was a relief to enter the Elcor and Volus office.

He just caught a strange garble from the Elcor, a sturdy quadruped species, before his earpiece translator kicked in. "Pleasant greeting," the Elcor seated at a desk said, "It is always good to meet one of your species, Human. I am Calyn, Elcor Ambassador. What can I do for you today?"

"Good to meet you, too, Calyn. Lieutenant Commander Alenko of the Alliance Military." Kaidan was so preoccupied with Shepard he had forgotten to rehearse to himself a reasonable line for the strange mission he'd been given. When in doubt, he thought, people like to talk about themselves. "We humans are a curious species. Can you tell me about your history and culture?"

The Volus broke in, "I don't *breath* know why you bother, *breath* Calyn. Like all ther humans, *breath* this one clearly doesn't care *breath* about us."

"Disappointed rebuke: You don't really believe that, and if you do, I feel bad for you. Genuine enthusiasm: I always enjoy telling about the Elcor."

As the Elcor droned on in a monotone and with scents his Human nose couldn't appreciate, Kaidan drifted to Shepard. He needed to screw his head on straight and, what was it she had said? He needed to do his job. Kaidan was about to ask about Saren directly when his boots vibrated with the footfalls of another Elcor behind him.

"Great despair: Ambassador Calyn, I need your help."

"Ambassador," Kaidan inserted and remembered to bow, "Thank you for sharing with me. Unless I can be of assistance, I'll let you return to your duties." The Elcor dipped a massive head in return.

The second Elcor considered Kaidan. "Hopeful request: Human, you are unknown to the Citadel, yes? Would you help me? Bashful admission: I have been betrayed and need someone to speak with Sha'ira. Enraged statement: She has banned me from her premises and won't return my messages."

"Well, maybe I can talk to, uh, this Sha'ira if I run across her," Kaidan had offered before he really had thought through the consequences.

"Brightened response: Thank you, Human. I hope you do. Fallen consideration: Though not much can help now."


	11. Shepard

Havil was beginning to wonder if Anderson's orders, both the diplomatic liaising and, Havil grimaced, what was to follow, was not actually some infernal Dantean punishment. Though the pull of the bruises on her leg reminded Havil that Dcotor Chakwas wasn't going to clear her for combat for at least another day, she had been close to squeezing that last Hanar under her arm like a bagpipe bladder. If he had felt the writhing despair of the beacon, he wouldn't be so proud of his Prothean gods. She rolled a shoulder still aching from recoil, fixing her thoughts on the knots in her back sliding over each other with little bursts of pain.

She mounted the many stairs to the Asari embassy offices---for finding the Citadel first, they had of course awarded themselves spectacular views and arduous approaches. She had meant what she told Sideburns, if not the ferocity with which she had said it. The Asari would respect her more, though Havil thought while giving her rough cheek a brush with her fingertips, she wasn't attractive enough for the notorious flirtatiousness of the younger ones to be a problem.

The doors silently swept open to a posh, bright space with a single curved desk. A Turian in ornate ceremonial armor that emphasized his spurs and fringe with matching sharp spikes down his back and calves leaned threateningly over the desk, obscuring her view. Havil felt acutely the lightness of her back and hip without her weapons---prohibited on the Presidium. Wary, Havil remained still and well back. Turians' deceptively long were arms capped with sharp talons, dangerous in their own right. As she quietly slid to secure an angle behind him with a view to the receptionist, she caught a glimmer. The Turian bore an ancient sword barbed with serrations to cut through tough Turian carapace, a relic of their pre-galactic era internecine wars. Having wielded one in N7 training, Havil knew it would glide through Human or Asari bodies without resistance.

"I will ask one more time, Asari," the Turian brandished his weapon, "I demand that you deliver Sha'ira to me for a duel to restore the honor she has robbed me and my clan of."

"General Oraka," the Asari leaned as far back in her chair as her stiff spine allowed, "the Consort's establishment is not here. She's not a diplomatic official."

"No? Then why is she handling Turian state secrets?" Oraka menaced, now drawing his sword up in a two-handed stance, ready to strike.

"I... I..." the Asari stuttered. Havil's let the flow of honed reactions wash over her, reveling in the adrenaline now tensing her muscles and pumping her blood away from her limbs. This time, Havil did not wait for it to subside. Unarmed against a blade-wielding opponent, an arm, if not her life entirely, was likely to go. She needed to close distance, quickly, but a biotic charge in this tight pace might end with her in the desk, or worse, detonating the unarmored Asari to bits.

Just as the Turian had committed his weight to a strike, Havil jumped into a slide with her feet scissoring his. As he came crashing down, spikes and all, she rolled with her momentum into the desk with a sickening thud. Dress blues made poor armor. As she recovered her breath and he scrambled for his sword, she noticed his wrist guards were also studded with barbs, but the sword was the greater threat. She coiled into a spring to leap over him to land with her boots-the toughest equipment she had on-on its flat.

Muscles taut, Havil discerned the click of a gun's safety release over the scrapes of the Turian's armor on the deck plating.

"General Oraka," the Asari receptionist calmly leveled the pistol at the Turian, who let the sword he had just reacquired clatter to the floor, "Do not threaten the Asari Empire, unless you wish me to demonstrate the superiority of modern arms over your family armor."

Havil watched Oraka slump down. The back knee spurs, she noted, very precisely cleared his upper leg with his bent to sit. "Listen," he said, "I just need a couple of minutes, please..." She had never seen a Turian grovel. It wasn't honorable for either party.

"In the interest of our species' mutual admiration," the Asari sneered as she came out from behind the desk to peer down at Oraka, "I will not end you. But if you value your life highly, you will leave now, quietly, and not bother us again with your... ravings." The Turian's head bowed, and noting her victory, the Asari then returned to her seat.

Oraka then stood and belted his sword to his side. "You," he pointed a talon at Havil and searched her scars with his eyes, "have a Krogan quad coming in unarmed," he patted the pommel of the sword, "and honor. Unlike that one." He turned to the Asari, "I know when I am beat, but you have not heard the end of this." With that he left with a gait less stiff, less proud than Havil expected of Turians.

Havil leaned on the desk herself, feeling the twinge of a bruised rib. Chakwas would be furious. As the high of combat subsided, she distantly realized that she should also be furious.

"You had a pistol the whole time? What is wrong with you?" she accosted the receptionist.

"We Asari do not resort to violence quickly, like you do, human." The superior tone, with its sneering lilt, was particularly grating given Havil had just saved her life, and Havil felt her biotic hand curl with power. Havil tried to close her eyes and feel the cold around her, but images of destruction and death edged in, now tangled with bloody visions of losing her limbs to Turian attack.

"You could at least have put him in stasis, or a lift," she growled back, displaying the sparking blue of her own hand. Asari were natural biotics, having evolved with eezo on their home planet, and not receiving it from industrial accidents with mass effect drives like most humans. Havil's parents had never mentioned anything, but... With a shudder, she drove the memory of their charred remains deep under the cybernetic husks on Eden Prime, the acid-melted marines on Akuze, the slaughtered Batarians on Skilium, and the countless other bodies of species and planets she didn't know raging through her mind. Anything but Mindoir.

"No, no, as you can see," the Asari, unbothered by Havil's inner struggle, elegantly gestured around the room, "there's priceless art, and those artifacts---" Havil rubbed her forehead.

"You're kidding me, right? A wacko brandishing a sword, and you're worried about," Havil didn't even know what to call the object in a case to her right.

"That's, ah, insured for at least 30,000,000 credits," the receptionist said.

Havil suppressed the urge to turn it into slag. Forget discharge---the Alliance would have her cleaning latrines at basic for years, or worse, permanently assigned to Udina as an attache.

"Is there something I can help you with? I'm very busy at the moment," the Asari continued, tapping a long stylus with irritation on the desk.

Havil's omni-tool read 17:50, time to meet up with Alenko and Williams for Anderson's ordered social hour. His drinking, clearly, was bad enough, and it was worse to inflict it on others. Havil usually avoided alcohol, unwilling to relive what it lead through her defenses. She closed her eyes for a moment again, and the tang of hot metal and blood and rattle of thousands of alien deaths rang through her senses, choking on smoke that wasn't there. If she couldn't keep it away, a drink wouldn't matter, anyway. "You know what, no. I don't need anything, except next time I start adding to these," she thrust her face forward and traced the scars she knew Asari found so ugly, "to protect your life, pull the pistol and blow my brains out first. Save me the trouble."

The Asari frowned and made some gesture Havil was happy to not understand. "Ugh, you Humans really are disgusting. Good day, Commander."

Havil turned to leave, noticing neither that she had not introduced herself nor that the receptionist was placing a call to the secure business line of Matriarch Sha'ira. As the doors to the embassy shut, all Havil heard was, "Please let the Matriarch know phase one has been successful, report forthcoming."

Her team was already waiting for her at the doors of the embassy lounge, an upscale bar frequented by those with the diplomatic access. "Orders, ma'am?" Alenko began.

"Drinks," she brought the official command from the Captain up on her omni-tool for them to see, "on Anderson. Something about 'relaxing.'"

Havil stood stiffly at the bar while they filled each other in on their respective visits and waited for drinks, though she abruptly risked eye contact with Alenko when he mentioned "an Elcor problem with someone called Sha'ira" that he was hoping to resolve either this evening or tomorrow morning.

They were heading for a table, where Havil planned to ask for details, when "Attention" rang out, and a table of Marines whipped into hurried salutes.

"At ease, at ease, soldiers," she motioned at them to return to their drinks. It was ridiculous to call attention at a bar, but Havil was unfortunately used to exuberance.

"Relax. This isn't a snap inspection," Alenko chuckled as one tried to tuck in his shirt without them noticing.

One introducing himself as Peterson looked just like Jenkins, Alenko thought, and he was slow in joining his friends, who returned to their seats. In fact, just as Havil feared, he was approaching the table Williams had just claimed. "A... A... Anything I can do for the hero of the Skyllian Blitz?" Havil looked at him hard, daring him to call her a hero again.

When after a few moments the likely inebriated soldier had not left, Havil released her balled fist. "Yes, actually, where's Sha'ira?"

On catching the name, the other marines stilled, and the private's eyes widened. "Oh, she's across the footbridge from here, down that way. Not that I've been there." His comrades had a laugh at his expense. "It costs half a year's credits just to talk with her! Half the galaxy's on her waiting list."

When the ribbing died down, Williams was patting the ensign on the shoulder and wiping her eyes. "Commander," she asked, "Permission to stay?" Some of the young men gave a whoop at her question.

"Granted, Chief. Enjoy. Regular duty tomorrow morning," Havil reminded the Williams with a pointed finger. Pink punched Peterson playfully on the shoulder the same way, Havil thought, she had probably done in the 212, or Havil had done with her fellow marines before Akuze.

Havil did not want to ask Alenko if he planned to join her. In fact, Havil would have preferred to avoid him entirely, but he was already halfway out of his chair, and had interpreted her look as an inquiry, to which he answered for the benefit of their audience, "Are you kidding, Commander? A chance to meet an Asari matriarch who's a galactically known Consort?"

A round of smiles and raised glasses from the Alliance soldiers greeted his response. Havil only retreated further into a scowl. The barest tilt of her head ordered Alenko with her. Williams had already commandeered their drinks; at least someone would enjoy herself this evening.


	12. Sha'ira

An array of full-length dresses trundled by on their automated rack. Matriarch Sha'ira, former High Priestess of the Temple of Athame and present Doyenne Consort of the Asari Republic, let them whir by in a shimmer of color. Then, at the wave of her hand, the motion stopped, leaving the dresses gently swaying, opting for a simple black number, a high collar, sleeveless, and full front, with a plunging back open from the sensitive folds of the on her neck down perilously close to a similar spot near the base of her spine.

Every highly attuned nerve of her body sang as the sleek fabric slithered over her form, coming to rest with its weight on her shoulders, chest, and hips before draping onto the floor. With a small smile, she loosely ran her fingertips down its length, in part savoring her own physicality---Sha'ira was quite conscious of her beauty, her form, and the desire it could awaken---but moreso accustoming to the garment's past, its memories, and in this case, also her own memories of donning, wearing... and she relived with closed eyes, shedding it.

She had cleared her evening, a costly rearrangement that her acolytes could sort out, for a final meeting she anticipated, no---she now lingered with her hands down at her hips and gazed in the mirror---that she knew would come this evening. She would not guard her hands from unintended prying with her usual gloves this evening, and she did not need memories, like those the dress held, bubbling up to distract her.

Returning to her reception room, she noted with approval that her acolytes had cleared it. A rug remained in a circular depression in the center, an uncluttered table held together an arrangement of chairs, a small sofa graced a wall. The frosted doors to her more private business room were closed. With a gesture she lowered the lighting to a level humans found relaxing, with ample shadowy spaces to spark intrigue.

In a dark corner, Sha'ira sank into the embrace of a deeply stuffed chair, relishing its pressure on her frame, but carefully propping her elbows against her side and folding her hands together in the air. There she slowed the rise and fall of her breaths, closed her eyes, and allowed herself a memory, one passed down from mother to daughter, mother to daughter, in her line of the High Priestesses and Consorts for millennia beyond written Asari record, from before the Asari swam the stars, from before parthenogenesis: A matron in the loose, undyed shift of the Temple walks its cool flagstones barefoot, stopping before Athame herself, figured in stone. She presses two hands low on her abdomen with a small smile, shuts her eyes, and lets the whispers tumble over her lips. As the petitions echo softly, she feels the three-fingered hand on her own, the hand of a creature claiming Athame's name. The creature's touch burns into her mind, sifting through her memories and thoughts. It knows her.

The woman did not understand what Asari scientists would discover long after all their males died out of what Sha'ira suspected was a genetically modified and targeted disease. The Asari escaped extinction as women discovered with guidance from the cult of Athame, slowly, that they could reproduce amongst themselves using their newfound biotic powers. The four-eyed creature, whose dark trapezoidal head Sha'ira and her progenitors would never forget, manipulated strands of DNA deep inside the woman's womb with its mind, leaving behind the first of Sha'ira's line of secret-keepers. She didn't have a name for this creature, but along with the touch of its hand, it preserved in her and her mothers an overwhelming desire for vengeance against some overpowering evil.

Though the first Consort of the memory revered the experience, it always unsettled Sha'ira, and she now carefully opened her eyes to the present. Young Tevos had not been burdened with this story, but T'amal had shared just enough of its implications to awaken the Ambassador's shame. Only a handful of Asari would ever know some part of it at any time---the Justicars could be trusted to eliminate stray information transfer---but those who did either eventually regained their trust in themselves and their species as the rudders of the galaxy or departed it in self-imposed exile.

Sha'ira found the memory itself, and the knowledge she had gained about it, isolating enough in her vocation as Consort without requiring exile. Tipping her head back into the curve of the chair specifically designed to support her crest, Sha'ira envied those who could move on, as she was sure Tevos would. Sha'ira, like her mother before and daughter after her, bore the stained hands of the house of Sha: fine-tuned control over powerful, unequal melding through touch. She could read moods and secrets, desires and fears---all that might be hidden---with a press of a hand, without revealing her own.

Without saying as much to Tevos, T'amal had cleverly signaled that she wanted Sha'ira to employ her talents with the Human female. If the beacon passed anything of the Protheans and the Asari to the Human, the Justicars would have their orders. Sha'ira did not fear that possibility, but she regretted was that Tevos had to have been told. She heaved a deep sigh and then, fully aware of herself and the chair pushing into the back of her neck, smiled. At least this way, if Tevos, now one of the Solemn Vow, wanted another before ascending to Matriarchhood, Sha'ira would have the pleasure of sleek, white-patterned Ambassador's body and her metaphoric mind. Her position and heritage came with downsides, but, she thought as she rubbed those uncovered and skilled hands together, it had its benefits of heightened satisfaction---with only the very choicest nobles of Asari society---as well.

A chime summoned her from the depth of reverie, and she returned to the surface of reality for air. "Yes," she answered, opening the comm with another complex wave.

"Two Humans are approaching, Consort," came the voice of her most trusted acolyte, Nelyna. "Havil Shepard and Kaidan Alenko."

"Initiate the second phase. I trust you will do what is necessary," she ordered.

"So it will be done, Doyenne."

A tone beyond sentient hearing designed to aggravate the human male's eezo glands and L2 implant would greet the couple as they approached Sha'ira's complex. Nelyna, whose specialty was human massage, would tend to him. Sha'ira rose, and took up a pose staring out the window with her back to the door. She needed Shepard alone.

"Commander," she intoned upon hearing the Human enter, "That's far enough." Only then did Sha'ira slowly turn to face Shepard, who had stopped a few paces away, in the depressed center circle of the room, in surprise. This was good. Shepard was tall and lean, like an Asari, marred with scars casting shadows on her pale face. Hair the color of flames surprised the Matriarch, as did Shepard's rigid posture---proud, weary, and broken all at once.

Sha'ira descended the two stairs to Shepard's level, but remained back. "I hear I have you to thank for intervening at the Asari embassy this afternoon." She added her most alluring smile. "But I must ask what it is that brings you to seek my services?"

Shepard's hair lines above her eyes shot up in surprise, as Sha'ira had intended. It was, after all, her own machinations that led Shepard and her Lieutenant into her disaffected clients. "Matriarch Sha'ira," the woman began, "I regret that I don't know if there;s a more appropriate form of address. But my Lieutenant promised to speak to you on behalf of an Elcor accusing you of... loose lips. The General I encountered today said much the same. It doesn't speak well of your... services." The human shifted her weight once, and had tugged at a sleeve.

Sha'ira wanted to laugh. The Hero of Elysium was nervous. But of what? She slowly stepped close to the Commander, briefly placing a hand on the woman's shoulder---where her index finger could brush Shepard's neck.

Instantly, Sha'ira felt the woman's powerful standing biotic charge, and beneath it a sudden tension in her muscles: danger. Bright green eyes fixed on her own and narrowed. Sha'ira let the touch linger until the molten core of Shepard's emotions threatened to erupt onto the seafloor. Beneath the military poise, there was fear, anger, loneliness, shame, and guilt roiling deep, deep in the Human's center. In her momentary search, Sha'ira did not find the beacon's message; but somewhere beneath layers and layers of walls and distractions, she faintly detected the tang of her ancestor's brush with vengeance, of Prothean. Sha'ira poked at it, gently, to no effect. She would need more contact, and more trust.

"You may call me Sha'ira, Commander," she kept her tone warm and inviting, almost off-hand. Shepard watched her hands, wary. "You have, Commander, expertise that I need right now, and if you can help me," here she tilted her head thoughtfully, "I will recompense you well." According to her network, Shepard and her team had been rubbing crests with officials all day, and Sha'ira was betting on a Consort counting as an official.

In a tight voice, the Human responded. "I don't need your..., I mean, you are beautiful, but it's not..." She was still off balance, perhaps from the touch.

Sha'ira now let her laugh ring out. "No, Commander. I have no doubt," she gestured, opening a video screen of the Human male being attended to, "you can have what you like." At the Human's frown and wrinkled brow, Sha'ira smiled knowingly. "But I might have information about your investigation."

"Fine."

"Septimus respects you. Would you speak with him for me, convince him to come... without his sword?" Sha'ira closed the distance again, now standing directly in front of the woman, peering into those remarkable green eyes.

"I will... do my best," Shepard replied, almost mechanically. Sha'ira saw her shoulders bristling. She remained there just long enough for Shepard to be unbearably uncomfortable, and then abruptly turned away. Shepard took the opportunity to escape.

Sha'ira sagged into her chair, killing the lights with a wave and slipping on a pair of gloves. She sorted through the tangle of the Human's mind, and knew why the woman was nervous in this intimate space; she was barely holding down a mess of terrible memories and emotions. By tomorrow, Sha'ira hoped to be there to catch the beacon's vision as it came bursting to the surface with the rest of them.


	13. Shepard

Havil's imagination played on the dark corners of the Consort's chambers. Sha'ira's charge filled the room, and her touch made Havil's skin crawl. The blue hand lingering near her collarbone and the close whisper pinned her to the floor, and she wavered. A heavy ache collected in the back of her throat; her eyebrows drew together; her eyes burned. She couldn't leave quickly enough. As the doors slid behind her, she pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth and breathed deeply.

This never happened with shrinks. The scientists trained to think in hyper arousal of brain regions, production of stress hormones, and the rest. They encouraged tears that Havil never found for them: tears demonstrated a well-functioning hypothalamus finding an outlet for emotions, and they would help flush the cortisol ever-present in her hyper-aroused system. Whatever that all meant, they meant she was malfunctioning, and it could be corrected.

Other soldiers, like Alenko, were caught up in the news reports and stories of Havil Shepard, hero, when Havil knew the truth-it's not desert that saves you. But no one survived from Mindoir. No one survived from Akuze. Sure, Williams's whole unit bit it, but some Eden Primers lived. Now that she could trust her eyes, Havil surveyed the low tables and recessed booths, filled with clients of various races tended to by the Consort's acolytes in the main level. Not one of them would understand.

The Consort, Havil now dared to think did. In her touch, Havil felt she knew shame, isolation, violence, and perhaps the most concerning, deception, all of which swirled now within Havil. She tried in vain to find the chill of the air and the confines of her uniform, but only provoking pain---she pressed a fresh bruise from her Turian encounter---temporarily kept it all at bay. She hadn't felt this fragile since the transport plucked her from Akuze, and she had plenty of pain to access then. Havil needed something to engross her.

Where was Alenko? As she strode through the booths, she spotted the knees of Alliance fatigues poking out of one near the entrance. The Consort's hostess was seated behind him, sharing what she had called her personal area of expertise, "finding pressure points on your body and releasing them." Sha'ira had been dangerously close to finding and releasing her own inner pressure points.

"Ahem... Lieutenant?" Sideburns whipped his eyes open at her voice.

"Commander," he leaned out of the hostess' grasp and stood, rolling his neck with a deep sigh. "Sorry. I..." When he finally came to the attention that she quickly dismissed, he appeared in repose, peaceful almost, for the first time since they had met, with the exception of his now deeply coloring cheeks. With an involuntary sigh of her own, Havil knew Sha'ira was right.

"Let's get back to the Normandy."

"Aye-aye, ma'am." In the relative safety of transit, she allowed herself to realize what she had been deliberately avoiding. Alenko was handsome, well-built, and good on the field. A biotic, she thought with a flush of her own, would be, well, interesting. Her steps quickened.

But he was no doubt smitten with the hero. And Havil couldn't afford a physical night to get complicated with feelings she couldn't reciprocate and the inevitable trouble it would create on board, especially not with her direct report. She was content to return to the docking bay in silence, but Sideburns kept fidgeting---smoothing his uniform, running his fingers through his hair, scratching at his evening stubble. He took one of her looks askance as an opportunity. "Commander, about today..."

"Listen, Lieutenant. I don't need your apology. I just need---"

"Me to do my job. I hear you, Commander. But, well, uh, you should know I'm an L2." He pointed to the biotic amp port just below his collar. "One of the first batch of human bioitics. The L2 ports are powerful, but I get migraines, and something about the compound," he stopped and looked back across the footbridge over the reservoir, "was going to set one off." He then stared out over the water. "Most of my biotic cohort with the L2s are unstable, self-harming, or worse. You," he turned again to look at Havil, "probably have the L3, which is more refined, if less powerful in, uh," he coughed, "in most cases."

Havil would welcome a consuming physical pain right now. If only a Krogan were nearby, she would pick a fight with him and let Chakwas sew the pieces back together. The idea of a fight, however, reminded her of the cold calculus of command. "Will it affect your duties?"

"No, uh, ma'am. At least it hasn't yet. I, well, I haven't been engaging my biotics much lately, so I'll have to see. But I have fast-acting medication for the field that will hold off the worst until you can get me to a medbay."

Havil just made a grunt. Sparring him wouldn't be a good idea, then, either. Faintly in the peace of the Presidium she heard the screeching of the vision and quickened her pace for the Normandy's rack, bench, and punching bag.

The chime sounded distantly as Havil tromped through the forest again. The tree crowns above were aflame, and she coughed in the choking black smoke and heat below. The chime sounded again, nearer, but where? Under her feet twigs and leaves crackled and curled, blackening. The chime sounded a third time, and Havil opened her eyes to the dots of light above. She squinted. She had no armor and no rifle, but her amp flared. Finally, the dots resolved into the lattice pattern of an open deck, and Havil mashed the control, which read 0500, to swoop her pod up, flinging its door open and throwing her sweaty, panting self out of its confines. She rubbed her eyes and stepped into BTUs, slowly continuing her self inventory. Her muscles were taut with microtear repair, and her hands bruised and bloody. At the punching bag, she faintly remembered, she had worn gloves. Only then did Havil notice dried blood where she had pummeled her pod in the night.

Down in the cargo bay, Shepard was about to start on push-ups and mountain climbers, hoping the sweat and pain would tamp down the images in her mind, at least for the work-out, and make the need for medi-gel on her hands less suspicious.

"Commander, good morning," she heard a call from the weapons bench. Williams's own hands were covered in armor polish.

"As you were, Chief. You didn't sleep?"

"No, ma'am. Partly the fun," Williams's broad smile died after an instant, "but partly..." her voice trailed off.

"Yeah." Havil instantly called up in her mind the face of every soldier from Akuze and every friend and family member from Mindoir. Interspersed in her private litany were strange, diamond-shaped faces she hadn't watched flicker out.

"Commander?"

Havil looked at Pink. "You going to be ok?" From the broad circles under Williams's eyes that even make-up couldn't mask, she knew that the answer was no. She, of all people, would give Williams a chance anyway.

"I'll be fine, ma'am. Just don't ask me to translate Salarian or something."

Havil sighed. "Not today, Williams. I need light armor, something discreet for the three of us."

"I'll have it ready, Commander. Wouldn't want to miss the wards. Guys yesterday said they were like the metropolises on earth, just with mostly aliens."

"Very good, Chief." The woman certainly was driven; Shepard's armor shone. After Alenko's revelation last night, Havil read both their personnel files. What she couldn't figure out was what Williams was going taking second on a grunt foot patrol on a colony world in the first place. Armor shop, even on the Normandy, was also beneath her. She had top marks out of training, awards for valor under fire, distinction in riflery, hand-to-hand, tactics, and yes, marksmanship. She should have been an N candidate.

After a wet-wipe wipe-down, Havil reconstituted breakfast and read the day's briefing reports in the mess. Anderson's orders were unchanged: pursue leads about Saren, which at this point included dealing with the dirty club owner Executor Pallin had sicced Williams on and, Shepard frowned at Anderson's second order, corralling Sha'ira's unruly Turian General.

"Commander," Alenko plunked down in the seat next to her. "Nothing like the Alliance's best rehydrated eggs." He emptied two crinkling foil packages onto his tray. From his small smile, he was clearly still benefiting from his massage.

Havil would have liked to ignore Alenko entirely, but their small squad was all the Normandy had, and assigning him to duties on board would be as much of a waste as making Williams clean guns all day. He made eye contact too much and insisted on apologizing for everything. She could also not forget how he had reached for her arm. Even here at rest, his biotic charge caused a tingle down her side from her shoulder all the way down to her foot. She caught herself briefly wondering what would happen if they were any closer and shut that thought away with a gulp of the scalding drink. The burning heat brought up other memories, and Havil pressed her fingernails sharply into her palms. As they rode the elevator down to the cargo bay together yet again, Havil felt the same oppression as she had in Sha'ira's room and bolted for the lockers.

The three marines suited up in minimal armor, upper body vests with some kinetic barrier protection and basic shields, as well as mounts for one firearm each. More than that would attract attention in a civilian area. From the Normandy's berth, it was a long elevator ride down to C-Sec headquarters. To keep her mind off biotic charges, beacon visions, and drunk captains, she asked her team, "What do you know about Krogan?"

"Tough bastards," Williams started. "Big lizards, water reservoir, fat stores, and redundant organs. Tough to kill."

"And?"

Alenko added, "I've only ever seen males off Tuchanka, usually mercs. Always ready for a fight." He clearly remembered her male/female sex statistics from yesterday. She frowned; she had overreacted.

"Well," Havil nodded, "Let's hope the one in C-Sec wants to talk instead. But if not, they have excellent range of vision with such wide-set eyes, and none of us would survive a full-on Krogan bloodlust charge. Best to hit them with..."

"Stasis, until the fight is over, so we can all concentrate fire." Alenko interrupted. Shepard raised an eyebrow at him.

"Correct, Lieutenant." She hoped to kill any hint of affirmation with formality. With their size, hump, the vision, an entire set of redundant organs, and extremely quick heal times, the Krogan often lived close to 1,000 years, despite their love for battle. The best way to fight one was to avoid him. They were the perfect soldiers for a reason: the Council needed infantry to eradicate the Rachni, a large, expansionist insectoid species. Salarians meddled in the Krogan evolution, hurrying them along and selecting for brute force.

In the elevator lobby, Shepard spotted him right away. A Krogan in worn red heavy armor was towering over a human C-Sec officer who was attempting to threaten his detainee: "Threatening an officer of the peace warrants detention, Wrex."

Closer now, Shepard watched the Krogan turn a red eye to the officer and ask, "Are you going to arrest me, or am I free to go? I have a human to kill."

"Another threat? Do you want me to throw you in a cell?"

"I want you to try," the Krogan rumbled, and then chuckled as the C-Sec officer waved him off. As he stomped over to her squad, the deck rattled. "Staring is rude, Human. Do I know you?" He stabbed one of the three meaty fingers into Shepard's chest. She folded her arms and leaned back, trying hard not to let him or herself pick the fight she was sure they both wanted.

"Name's Shepard. Alliance Navy. I have business with Fist. I hear you might be interested in coming along."

"Shepard." He turned his head to look at her with one eye and then the other, then smelled her. "From what I hear, we're both warriors, Shepard, so out of respect I'll warn you: If I go with you, I will kill him."

She folded her arms. That was the problem with Krogan.

"This is a bad idea," Williams whispered.

Wrex glared at Williams a moment. "Not that bad, unless you humans don't taste as good as I hope." A grin exposed rows of pointed teeth. He extended his hand, surprisingly familiar with human customs. She shook it.

"Good. Shall we?"

"Just show me something to shoot already, Shepard. Heh, heh, heh."


	14. Wrex

Wrex knew Shepard wouldn't actually let him kill Fist, at least not when she was around. Like Turians, most Alliance types were all about orders, duty, and protocol, filling their short lives with reports and rules that bore faint relation to actual honor. Busy, skinny, little squishy people, humans were. Even three of their prime fighters, like these three, jiggled when they walked. Males and females alike were especially vulnerable at their twiggy, exposed necks that offered quick access to their spinal cords. They also lacked redundant systems except for their waste-filtering organs. Without specialized armor, they were and susceptible to heat, cold, dehydration... the list of their weaknesses went on and on. Not that Wrex minded; creative outlets weren't always so easy to come by in a merc's career.

He usually avoided the young, curious, and thriving species. Their females regularly reeked of fertility, and unlike the Krogan, the Council hadn't hindered their rapid population growth and spread to colonies. But Shepard was soldier he had to see in action himself. In her flimsy excuse for armor, a mere vest over the cloth soft-skinned species donned to avoid aggravating their sensitive skin, Wrex did not fear her. Holding off a bunch of Batarian terrorists... he could do that. Surviving a thresher maw... he had done that. But most humans couldn't, and like all Krogan, Wrex measured himself up against the best.

It was a tight fit for the four of them in the elevator, and from his vantage point, he could clearly see the implants on the back of Shepard's and Alenko's necks. Biotics. Of course he knew about Shepard, you'd have to be hiding under the loneliest hunk of concrete on Tuchanka to have missed the media reports. Humans loved to broadcast everything about themselves: where they were settling, how their families were doing, their favorite foods... for a species that died so early, it's like they had to proclaim themselves to the universe to forestall the day it would forget three, though, were quiet. He was sure that had to do with him. The inferior female, Williams, kept facing him despite the cramped car. Smart. He snorted. He wouldn't trust him either.

"These Citadel elevators take too frak'n long. If the Protheans built the relays, you'd think they could make an elevator, too." he opined to no one in particular. Even the ancient lifts on Tuchanka---those few that still functioned in the ruins when he was a whelp---were faster.

"Well, you're in luck," Shepard replied over her shoulder. "Here we are." As the door slid up, Wrex felt something was off, and the thrill of danger hit him like a shot of ryncol. Time slowed as his hearts quickened, pouring blood to his muscles and sharpening his vision and hearing. He had a hand on his shotgun before the door cleared; the C-Sec officer usually posted outside each elevator entrance wasn't there. As he brought his shotgun to bear, he heard fire and watched drops of blood, Shepard's red blood, splatter on his armor.

The crests of three Turians poked from behind pillars facing the elevator in an ambush. They bore the high collars of full armor and long barreled weapons with silencers: a professional hit. "This is going to be fun!" Wrex bellowed to no one in particular as he pushed the slow humans, still arming themselves, aside and plowed into the nearest assailant with a thunderous crash. Wrex's headbutt cracked the plates on Turian's carapace, and his body went slack. Before it hit the floor, Wrex pivoted to his right and leveled his weapon at the thin waist of the second. He crumpled as well, though with considerably more dark blue plastered around him. To his surprise, when he turned back and pumped his weapon to nail the third, Shepard was already standing over the unconscious Turian. "Thanks, Wrex," Shepard squeezed her eyes shut---a silly reaction to pain that left her vulnerable---grunted.

Her left arm dangled at an odd angle. "You want me to kill him for you, Shepard?" At the thought, Wrex's brain lit up with anticipatory hormones. He leaned toward her with the hint of a smile. "It would be my pleasure."

"No, no. We need one to interrogate," she shook her head with that human waggle of negation and pointed at hers---the only one that might survive.

"Fine. Less fun that way, though." Williams was checking the perimeter, and Alenko had quickly tied up the Turian. Humans and their protocol. He felt a light tug on his shoulder plate as Shepard wrapped her slender Human fingers on it for support while Alenko pressed medigel into a wound that perforated Shepard's arm muscle. Shepard didn't move, but she bared her teeth with a hiss until Alenko had finished with the clear gel now smeared over the area. "Wrex," she looked him in one eye, now hugging the limb to her torso, "know a doctor?"

Dr. Michel's clinic wasn't far, though when Wrex offered to carry Shepard the short distance, she had glared at him. Alenko's eyebrows raised in surprise and his subtle head wag suggested to Wrex that the Commander would not appreciate it.

He kept scanning the crowds for Turians heading towards them. "You piss in someone's coffee, Shepard?" Wrex rumbled as they walked to the clinic. "Quite the trick to turn C-Sec."

"C-Sec?" Alenko questioned.

"Elevator guard was missing," he answered.

Shepard paused for a moment, and narrowed her bright green eyes. "Saren. Saren Arterius." She breathed in sharply between words, and began walking again, "Spectre. Know him?"

"Know him," Wrex didn't hitch his gait, but he did give her a quick look with one eye, and then the other. "The whole Terminus systems knows him, or at least, knows not to get in his way." Wrex's battle high came to a screeching halt as he remembered the only mercenary contract he'd broken, and the off-smelling Turian behind it.

"He got in my way, actually."

"Impressive, Shepard. We Krogan respect those who have worthy enemies. Though Saren... well, it will be a fun fight." He thumped his chest and banged the access panel open with his hand. Perhaps the universe would grant him a chance to avenge the Krogan mercs who hadn't deserted the Spectre, and who, Wrex thought with a rare shiver, had all died, supposedly at their own hands. The suspicious massacre had been just days after he, one of the few remaining Krogan biotic battlemasters, had left them.

"Down!" he heard Shepard shout. Through the open door he spotted a hostage situation: four armed men, one C-Sec officer, one terrified lab coat: the doctor. Shepard went crashing into cover behind a half wall between the door and the medical beds beyond. She was silent for a moment after, but as fire spattered against their cover, she held out her right hand, shouting, "Pistol!" He dropped his in her hand and knelt to gather his aura.

More shots, from an assault rifle, sounded. That was neither Shepard nor Alenko: C-Sec or hostiles. A Human doctor was in the corner, and a Turian C-Sec officer was taking on the hostiles, but he didn't have cover. Wrex waited for Shepard to steady his sidearm, and then he unleashed a biotic lift. All three Human hostiles were airborne, and he smelled the tang of hot metal as Shepard fired at them. She and the officer had dropped one by the time the other two fell from Wrex's field. He hopped over the wall with a thud and a roar to let them know a Krogan was coming.

Out of deference to Shepard, Wrex knocked both unconscious. Natural stimulants thrilled through his system. He would have disabled the third, were it not for the hole in the man's head clear through his eye socket. Shepard gave Wrex another negative head wag again.

"Nice shot," Wrex said to the Turian C-Sec officer with unusually good aim. He then turned to Shepard. "You know, if you are always walking into a firefight, I might just have to join you," he laughed. "After we get Fist."

"Thanks for the distraction," the officer replied, "Commander Shepard, I take it. And, of course, Urdnot Wrex."

The Turian had the grey face and blue markings of a common clan, and the standard blue armor of C-Sec detectives, like those he had just been trying to get to shit themselves. Wrex smiled. This one had half a quad.

"Reckless, both of you. You trying to get her killed?" Shepard pointed to the Human in the white coat, who was huddled in the corner.

"Oh," the officer cooed with surprise, "Dr. Michel, are you ok?"

"I'm fine, Garrus," the Doctor said as the Turian helped her stand. "Just a little shaken up. Please call for emergency assistance for... them." She waved her hand at the assailants.

"Right away, Doctor." Garrus tapped his comms, "This is Detective Vakarian, code 2-5 in the upper wards, I need med support for two..." he paused and pointed to Shepard, but she wagged her head, " that's two assailants, Dr. Michel's clinic."

Humans were weak in mind, too, Wrex thought as the doctor, shaken by the firefight, slowly realized why Garrus had indicated Shepard. "Oh, mademoiselle, you need medical attention!"

"Only if you're up for it, Doctor. Wrex, would you mind keeping an eye on the door?"

Wrex's translator did not explain why his ocular organ should be on the door, but he figured she needed him to ensure more trouble didn't follow. His stomachs rumbled, and he faintly smelled Salarian street food.

"No problem, Shepard. I could use a snack anyway. Suppose I'll have to pay for something since those Turians we got are dextro!" He chuckled at Garrus's frown and patted him on the shoulder on the way by. "Don't worry, too much carapace to make it worth it, anyway. Heh, heh, heh."


	15. Vakarian

Where we've been so far: Havil Shepard and her team were ambushed after picking up Urdnot Wrex to help with a lead on Saren.

Coating Citadel Security Officer Second Grade Garrus Vakarian's right talon was a gray goop the two still Humans on the floor did not deserve. Humans always seemed overstuffed to Garrus, like their furniture. From working with a few at C-Sec, Garrus knew some of them lifted heavy objects repeatedly to stuff even more into their stretchy skin. These two, obviously, were of that sort, with rounded bulges everywhere. They were also leaking dark red. He roughly rubbed the goop into the sources of the leaks, unworried about disease transfer from their levo-based cells into his dextro-based ones.

Garrus could have primed the medi-gel from Dr. Michel's stores in his omni-tool and dispensed it precisely, but he preferred to make the process as painful as possible. It was too bad, Garrus thought, that the thugs didn't wake for their treatment. He idly wiped the remaining goo on the sheets of a clinic bed, and secured one of the unconscious prisoners with the bottom of his boot. A few beds over, the small, pleasantly bony Dr. Michel was tending to Lieutenant Commander Havil Shepard.

"Yes, yes, please lie down so I can scan your medical history chip. You are Alliance, yes?" The doctor pointed to Shepard's Alliance uniform peeking out from under her protective vest. Shepard nodded, then transferred her public medical file to the doctor's datapad. "Ah, ok, ok..." As she read through Shepard's file, Dr. Michel's posture straightened, and her movements became increasingly quick and efficient. In that off human way, her skin became more vibrant. "Combat injuries, nothing active except classified mission exposure to unspecified artifact. Shouldn't have anything to do with your arm."

Garrus perfunctorily transferred custody of his temporary footrest to the medics and their C-Sec and Alliance escort. He'd let the other two Humans, a Lieutenant and a Gunnery Chief, file paperwork later. As soon as Shepard was ready, he needed to know why she was storming into his investigation. He kept his eyes on her. Shepard had thicker limbs than Dr. Michel, but they were not over-inflated, just firm, more... Turian than those on the thugs.

Once the officers left, he offered to assist Dr. Michel, who waved him off. It gave him, however, the vantage point to inspect Shepard's wound. She had taken sniper fire. He instinctively felt the weight of his own sniper rifle on his back. Garrus was intimately familiar with the view through a scope, having rotated out of beat work after his cover was busted while he was assigned to infiltrate an illegal organ sale ring. He felt his gizzard tighten, the small stones within scraping each other. Justice still awaited some. But C-Sec pulled him from the case and assigned him to Citadel Tower sniper duty instead. From an eyrie high above, he watched through the small circle of his scope as the Council judged on its own ineffable standards.

Partly out of fascination with Human stuffing and partly out of desperate need not to think about politics, Garrus watched Dr. Michel anesthetize Shepard's arm and, as much as possible, grope with instruments into the slimy red hole to repair the damage. The Human Commander had covered her eyes with skin flaps, but upon feeling the return of the large Krogan-Garrus recognized Urdnot Wrex from C-Sec's watch list-they sprang open, revealing bright green centers.

"Problem, Wrex?" Shepard asked, while remaining still for Dr. Michel.

The biotic Battlemaster was refueling, chomping away at a dubious smelling snack as he returned. "Saren won't try that again with me around, not unless he comes himself."

Garrus snapped his head up at Saren's name. "Saren's men. This is out of control! Doctor Michel, we'd better tell her, she's in danger, too."

Shepard visibly tensed on the table, and Dr. Michel stepped back. "Don't worry, Commander. I'm all done here. By the time feeling returns, the new cells I injected will have repaired most of the tissue. You'll be good as new."

"What did this have to do with Saren?" Shepard probed while glancing at the door. Garrus saw her two Human subordinates enter, forming a circle around Shepard's bed with himself, the Doctor, and Wrex. It wasn't how Garrus had imagined his investigation proceeding. He looked to Dr. Michel.

"It is Fist," she said. "Those were Fist's thugs, he sent them here to shut me up, so I wouldn't talk to Garrus."

"Fist?" Wrex growled.

"Go ahead, Dr. Michel, tell them what you were going to tell me before this started." Garrus reassured her with a touch on the shoulder.

"Well, yesterday a Quarian stopped by, to have me check on an infection from a rip in her envirosuit.'' From the few Quarians who trickled through the Citadel, Garrus knew a torn envirosuit was a death sentence were it left untreated. Their immune systems had been weakened from hundreds of years of isolation in their space fleet, and they could succumb to microbes other species encountered without even clogging their ceres. "She seemed in trouble, but thought she'd be out of it soon. She had some kind of information about Saren and was going to sell it to Fist," Dr. Michel explained.

"Fist doesn't make deals---" Wrex had jumped from the medical bed to the floor, shaking it a tiny bit.

"...he breaks them." Garrus finished, alarmed. "We need to get to that Quarian now!"

"That means we need to get to Fist." Shepard said. "Doctor, I'm going to need this arm. Can you... bring those nerves back online?" Garrus flared his mandibles. Fighting on an unhealed wound, well, it was crazy for any species.

Doctor Michel leaned back. "I can flush the anesthetic. It'll hold together, but it'll hurt."

"Commander," Garrus heard the Human male for the first time.

Shepard shook her head. "Do it." Shepard replied, adding, "And before you get excited, Wrex, you're staying here to guard the Doctor. You too, Alenko. Garrus, you're with me!"

The Krogan had started for his shotgun, but the Human male had a biotic sphere already in his hand. "Shepard," Wrex started, "Fist and I have... business."

Garrus felt that warmth at the base of his fringe when the pieces of an investigation suddenly fall together. "Wrex, Fist crossed someone, didn't he. And to buy you, well... he promised the Quarian's data to whom... Cerberus? No, they wouldn't hire a non-Human." Wrex just stared, but with the hint of a smile at the ends of his massive lips. "The Broker!" Garrus said.

"Pretty smart for C-Sec," Wrex's smile broke, but then he looked down at Garrus. "You see, though, why I must insist."

"You on the clock, Wrex?" Shepard asked. Garrus internally cursed at Human's obsession with figurative language. They were as bad as Asari.

"No, Shepard."

"Good." Shepard responded, and tossed over her shoulder as she left Wrex and Alenko in the clinic, "kill him tomorrow, whatever. Just not right now."

"Garrus," Shepard interrupted his thoughts en route to Fist's main club, Chora's Den. "What can you tell me about Fist?"

"He's a gangster, Shepard. Red sand, black market, murder---we know he's dirty, but haven't been able to get charges to stick, with evidence collection rules, interrogation rules, witness protection rules..." Garrus sighed.

''He's careful, then," Williams offered.

"Yeah. Good place for a bullet. You can't shoot anyone with red tape."

He heard Williams snort a laugh, but Shepard just frowned. As they walked, a ping came through to his omni-tool; given the situation with the Quarian and the Council's unresolved investigation into Saren, C-Sec officially sent orders to ride along with Shepard---not that he had waited.

As they approached, Garrus felt something missing, and it wasn't Chora's Den's usual stench of misdoing. It was quiet. "Fist knows we're coming." He hovered his omni-tool over the door. "Locked." he whispered to the Commander.

"Can you get it, Officer?" Shepard asked.

"No problem." He pulled his assault rifle and handed it to Williams. Then he called up code-breaking C-Sec subroutines on his omni-tool's orange screen. "Let's see... just have to calibrate these," he muttered to himself. "We're in."

"Keep that out, Garrus. I have a feeling a weapons overheat would do us some good in there, then we can get to shooting." He liked the way she thought, and while it would be useful to have a Krogan storming in for them, he was glad Wrex wasn't here. Krogan were maniacs once bloodlust hit.

"On my command," Shepard hissed. He watched her check her HUD---a small screen on a headband---and then put her ear to the door. "Now. Go!"

Williams laid down fire so the enemy would scramble for cover, and while they were still moving, he hit the left side of the circular nightclub with a sabotage attack. That freed the team to focus on the right, where Shepard had already biotically hurled the nearest goon into the bar. Bottled cascaded down with the unconscious Human in a tremendous crash. Garrus and his rifle had been waiting for this moment.

*Tat-tat-tat.*

The explosive rounds Garrus heard came from no ordinary weapon. Garrus scanned the room; Fist had hired muscle. "Shepard, Krogan incoming!" Garrus tried to slow the Krogan's charge with a quick burst of fire, but to no avail. With just her chest in armor, Shepard should have been more conservative, but he saw her give the Krogan a big target before diving into a tuck somersault, springing up after one rotation, and launching herself over the bar, where she'd have cover. The landing must have hurt on that arm. He kept training fire on the Krogan, shouting "Shepard, you all right?" Shepard waited until the Krogan was clambering on the bar when she popped up and trapped him in stasis.

"For later!" Shepard shouted at him as she ran in a crouch behind the bar to support Williams.

Once they had mopped up the rest of the human thugs, the Krogan had just recovered. The best way to deal with an angry Krogan, Garrus thought, was to get far, far away and have great aim. Garrus smiled and checked the scope of his sniper rifle, which he propped on a table at the other end of the room. Unlucky for him, Garrus thought, and fired, not at the head or the chest---too well armored or redundant---but at the left knee. Williams sniped the other, and the Krogan fell into a kneel, pitching his shotgun forward where Shepard was ready to catch it.

"Nice!" she shouted, before using it to whap the Krogan right in the quad. Garrus felt the unconscious assailant's pain in his own privates. "Let's go get Fist," Shepard ordered. Sweat rolled down her brow and was soaking her shirt. The pain was getting to her. They needed to wrap this up.

As they approached the hall down to Fist's private office in a back room, he raised his hand to stop the humans. "Shepard," he whispered, "I hear civilians."

She nodded, but kept her barrel up. She gave him a hand signal: one, two, three. He went in first-junior officer-and she spun up behind. Three men stood with pistols, probably black market and unlicensed. Knee-capping them would be quick, render them harmless, and give C-Sec something to do later. Garrus lined up his sight with the HUD on his eyepiece, let his finger rest on the trigger, and then the back of Shepard's head was in his shot. "Damn it, Shepard," he hissed.

She just waved the back of her hand at him and stepped out of cover. A stray shot from the men went high. "Hey," Shepard called out, "I've got a Marine and a C-Sec officer here, and a pissed off Krogan itching to fill a contract just a call away. Be smart." Garrus watched through his sight as first one man, then the other two lowered their guns.

"We're, we're just warehouse workers. Fist told us to guard the door, but..." Shepard took another step toward them, holstered her shotgun on her back, and kept her palms up and open.

"Why don't you all get out of here."

"Good, good idea!" The warehouse man left, and his two friends went with him. Garrus thought he smelled the scent of human urine on them as they passed.

"Drop those guns on the way out!" He yelled. His finger was still on the trigger. He turned back to see Shepard give a little grunt as she reached for her weapon again.

"Officer, door." The door slid open and Garrus was first in with Williams who shouted, "TURRETS!" as she dove behind a sofa. He gripped his omni-tool and dialed in the overload, discharging the burst as he rolled in for cover next to Williams. She dispatched one of the turrets before it was operational again. Shepard toppled the other, and it sparked as it shot up a smoking wall. Garrus peeked over the couch to see Shepard lunging at Fist to flush him out of cover. She must not have the energy to lift him.

As he saw Fist pop up, Garrus shit him right through his overstuffed shoulder. The impact floored Fist. Shepard knelt on the damaged arm. "The Quarian, where's the Quarian?"

While Shepard questioned a grunting Fist, Garrus spotted a safe on the wall. Probably an eezo mine of wrongdoing in there for C-Sec. As he cracked it, he heard Fist writhing, but defiant: "I told her I'd set up a meeting with the Shadow Broker." Garrus watched Shepard put a boot on his shoulder and rest the barrel of her shotgun on Fist's forehead. Fist screamed. "The corridor, wards access corridor. But you're probably too late!" Garrus already had his cuffs out and locked Fist to the wall. He put in a apprehend code to C-Sec over the radio and had to sprint to catch up with the humans.

At the door they stopped. Garrus heard argument and whispered to Shepard, "Not good. We've got to go." Blood ran down her arm.

Her green eyes narrowed. "You'd better not mean me," she said. "Let's do this."

"Hoo-yah," Williams answered.

When the door slid open, Garrus briefly caught the outline of a female Quarian's envirosuit before everything disappeared in smoke.


	16. 'Zorah nar Rayya

Where we've been so far: Shepard, Garrus, and Williams took on Fist at Chora's Den, but discovered he had set up the Quarian who had lucrative information.

For Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, this back alley was too still. Even with its rank racism, Tali preferred the wards, thronging as they were with species hawking wares and speeding to destinations, like an endless film scene awash in garish colors that most species couldn't properly coordinate. Over the past few weeks, she had stopped to wonder what the world would look like without a color-or a whole network of colors. On Rannoch, or so she had heard, much of the flora and fauna fluoresced in bright bursts, unlike in this dark alley, where the only bright so-called "ultraviolet" light came from improperly shielded power cables, and the many stains and spots of organic matter reflecting that light. She checked her envirosuit's seals and filters, and noted it registered a small uptick in her body heat from stress.

From a distance, she observed the distinctive slender forms of three Salarians, the short-lived and fast-talking amphibian race. Their heads were long cylinders with two slanting eyes bulging out and short, curved, fleshy horns on top. Tali had learned from her father, and again in her mandatory service training, that Salarians prized data and evidence, and specialized in espionage, biowarfare, and computer hacking. It would make sense, then, if the Shadow Broker were Salarian himself, though none of the three in the posse below stood out to Tali. Admirals, her father had explained when she had asked as a child why everyone treated her with such deference---Tali remembered the question being more along the lines of why no one wanted to be her friend---wore fine patterned and embroidered shawls, patches, and suit covers as a sign of office. What had he said, "To let pride swell in the hearts of the man of the fleet when they see an Admiral walk by, and to let humility reign in the hearts of the Admirals who know they are not worthy of it." She fingered the purple and gold cover than shimmered in her own vision, grateful it was less visible to the Salarians below.

The anxious tickle of a phantom illness broke in Tali's throat. Her information was legal, so why not schedule the transfer in the open? Why this deserted alley? Her stomach also growled; she needed the money. While she had been promised a sum that might purchase a small shuttle, she knew she would have to do better than that for the Fleet. But she would be glad to be rid of this data. The voices on the recording were unfamiliar, but sinister, from the hollow space between stars. She emerged from behind a column and descended a short set of steps. At least with this done, her time on the Citadel her hiding place. "Hello. It's Tali. And you are?"

"Oh, who we are isn't important, pretty Quarian. Why don't you show us what's behind that mask?" The two other Salarians laughed, but kept their hands on their pistols. Tali knew she couldn't outdraw them. One started running a three-fingered glove suggestively down her helmet, and her breath was ragged. Her HUD's suit furiously blinked in warning as fear threatened to overtake her.

"Can't we, um, just, here's... Isn't one of you the Shadow Broker?" Now the choppy laughs of all three rang through the oral transmitters in her suit. Keelah, she thought. But they were so amused they had taken their hands off her and their guns for a moment. She slowly moved her hand down to her belt, unlatched a smoke grenade, and armed it blind. As she thossed it, she caught a glimpse of a Turian C-Sec officer charging toward the corridor with two heavily armed humans.

In the same moment, she scrambled behind a stack of crates. There she knelt, praying to whatever ancestors may roam the Citadel, until the pops and bangs of gunfire stopped.

"Hello?" she finally heard a human woman's voice. She peeked over the crate. The Salarians were unconscious, and the human had her hands up. Tali lifted her pistol in the air with a shaking hand, and the Turian rushed to help her up. She gratefully grasped his extended hand, three-fingered like hers. She had a sense of deja vu, that she had seen this scene before.

"Alliance Navy, Commander Shepard," the human said. "Dr. Michel sent us. You ok?"

"Me, yes, I'm fine." Tali's suit informed her she was physically healthy and her suit was undamaged, though she was glad her mask obscured her shaky breathing. If her father knew she had been taken in by a human like Fist... Tali's HUD signaled an organic in distress, besides the injured Salarians she had marked as enemies, and highlighted the human woman when Tali looked up. "But you, Commander, you are not fine." In fact, the human looked terrible. Her armor only protected her chest and vital organs, and Tali could see the tell-tale tear of an enemy round in her left arm. A human male was breathing hard after the combat, and the Turian seemed steady by her side. Only the Commander was sweaty and sagging like a Quarian being chewed out by his Captain. She watched the human's mouth curve up, further wrinkling her already bumpy face with the protruding nose and ears.

"No, no, I am not, but I've been worse. I think you have something I might need... and you are---''

Tali slapped her gloved hand to the top of her helmet, where her forehead would be, and shifted her weight to one foot. "Oh, how silly of me, I'm Tali'Zorah nar Rayya." She watched the human woman's smile fade, and her eyebrows scrunched closer together, wrinkling a different part of her face.

"Tali Zohraaah..."

"Tali for short." Humans took names from their parents, Tali remembered from an exam. "Tali'Zorah is my personal name, like your, I think it is first name? I am called nar Rayya for the ship on which I was born, the Rayya."

"Tali," the Turian cut in, stepping next to Shepard after making sure the humans had secured the Salarians for booking. "Garrus Vakarian, Citadel Security. We spoke earlier about the investigation into Saren and the Geth? You might have something very important to us. What was the data you were offering the Shadow Broker?"

"Yes," Tali tapped the floor with a toe. She sighed, then looked the Turian in his hard, deep set blue eyes. "I figured it would get to you sooner or later, but I thought maybe I could get some value out of it first. Foolish of me, and selfish. Let's get the Commander here some medical assistance. Then I'll show you the data somewhere more private?"

The Turian's hand weighed on her shoulder. "Very good," he said. "Don't beat yourself up. You've handled these jokers well. Let's have Dr. Michel look you over too, make sure you didn't rupture your suit."

After more C-Sec officers arrived for the Salarians, they set off, with the Commander clearly suffering but refusing assistance, Tali considered telling the Turian that of course she knew her own suit's status; she wasn't an infant. But he hadn't accused her of stealing something yet or threatened to throw her off the Citadel. After the Geth drove them from Rannoch, the surviving Quarians had little to offer the powers of the galaxy. Without the stability of their home world, whose microbes were symbiotically attuned to their immune systems, the Quarians managed a meager existence on the Migrant Fleet. When the Fleet traveled to scrounge unused resources and derelict ships, most species either bribed them to leave or drove them off with force.

As she sat on the padded bed and looked out at the front room of the clinic, she observed what a strange group there was assembled in Dr. Michel's clinic, a red Krogan shook the room with his pacing ever since the Officer Vakarian mentioned something about Fist, the bosh'tet. The C-Sec officer leaned against the wall in the corner, crossing one leg at the knee over the other. From his position, Tali figured, he could see the entire bank of beds, as well as the waiting area and entrance. The Human woman watched Wrex, Tali noted with some disgust, herself most closely. The Human male was clearly the Commander's subordinate, as he hovered near her bed. The Commander did not move as Dr. Michel dug in her arm. Humans, for all the terrain of their faces and their oddly straight legs, had red blood like Quarians. Though given the Commander's stillness, Tali found her more like an empty envirosuit---the eerie appearance of life---than like any Quarian or Human.

In this strange menagerie, Tali finally felt, well, herself. With the exception, maybe, of the Human woman's wariness, this odd assortment did not treat her like she had a contagious illness because her species happened to be homeless. Instead, she had valuable information and, even, a life worth preserving. She smiled slightly behind her mask as her HUD pinged with the results of a full suit diagnostic: all systems normal. She had found the next step in her pilgrimage.


	17. Anderson, Udina

The light of the false evening filtered into Anderson's lower wards apartment. From the dingy sofa, he noticed a gleam catch the cup in his hand, a cheap plastic affair well beneath the dignity of the bourbon it held. It deformed in his grip, but wouldn't shatter if he fell asleep with it in his hand. And damn, Anderson sank deeper into the cushions, was he tired. He'd managed not to pulverize Udina, but it had taken time and, he thought as he swirled the liquid in the cup, it had cut significantly into his prized supply of Earth's finest. For the cost of a swanky apartment, he supposed, he could order more, but he didn't particularly want to check his finances. The encrypted message had cost a small fortune. Besides, a sofa, a terminal, and a desk---what more could a man need?

The panel on the wall over his desk, Anderson's private terminal, suddenly pinged. Though he was well into a generous three finger pour, he hadn't yet steadied his resolve. With a routine toss, he downed the rest, savoring the burn down his throat, and the slightest hint of the day's buzz beginning. He unclasped the top button of his blues, took a deep breath, and grabbed his cup and a largely empty bottle. They landed on the desk safely, where he pressed the blinking button: unknown sender.

_My dear David,_

He forewent the cup, slaking a sudden thirst. How long had it been since he'd been anyone's "dear" anything? A sudden weakness hit his legs, and he fumbled for the desk's stool. It received him, though he smacked his knee on the side of the desk on the way down. The pain seared up from the joint to his brain. Another slug quieted it.

_I'm so glad to hear from you. I had thought... Anyway, it's been a long time. Too long, I suppose. And coming on an encrypted back channel, well, let's just say I had to call in some favors to verify your message. Don't you worry. I was discreet. Dad taught me some things about privacy, after all. Anyway, I, well, I don't know what to tell you. Should I reprimand you for breaking my orders---you had promised to write---or for breaking several regulations for doing it this roundabout way? I guess you have your reasons. The David Anderson I knew definitely would._

_Anyway, yes, next time I get near the Citadel, I'd love to grab a drink. I, well, I'm seeing someone. It's nothing serious, but, I thought you should know. Until then, you take care of yourself, David. And that is an order. -K._

Anderson dragged his palms up and down his face, digging the heels into his arms. Even through the now distant pain, he could feel how his knees and hers had nearly touched, over hours, as they shared mere inches of free space on a cargo run, how their embrace had nearly been a kiss until her lips grazed past his, landing on his cheek instead. They could have been, just as he could have been a Spectre, could have been a father, could have been an admiral by now. He hurled his glass at the screen. Neither cracked. A amber few drops dribbled down the screen, where his inbox again blinked for his attention. After taking a hit off the bottle, he opened the official report from Shepard with the subject line, "Evidence."

As he read, he absently straightened out of his slump, and rebuttoned his collar. He would savor every moment of nailing Saren to the wall, physically, if possible. As for Udina, Anderson thought, clenching his fist so hard his knuckles cracked... Anderson would need more time. Stalking prey like Udina required care. The man had been playing him for years, blackmailing him with bad press about his supposed habits and now, he learned, keeping Kahlee from him. For now, he thought, he'd make damn sure Shepard's petulant comebacks and her icy immunity to Udina's ploys would plague the Ambassador and the Terra Firma party Anderson knew was secretly backing him for as long---or short---as the former might live.

Anderson pushed the bottle aside and tapped on the screen. "Alliance Communications Specialist Traynor, how may I direct your call?" An annoyingly cheerful young woman's voice rang.

"Get me Admiral Hackett," Anderson ordered.

"I'd be happy to do that, sir, but to contact someone in a command position, I'm going to need your name, service number, and security clearance."

Anderson gazed longingly at the bourbon. "Just tell him it's David Anderson. I don't have much time."

Ambassador Donnell Udina tugged at the sleeve of his white coat with gold detailing; it kept cutting into his armpit. Though Asari tailors were touted as the finest in the galaxy, they couldn't cut a man's suit. He needed to get back to Earth to find some real quality workmanship, maybe in New Brazil. "You," Udina snarled, "are not on today's schedule." Anderson, Shepard, Alenko, Williams, a Turian, a Krogan, and a Quarian all shuffled into his office. "What is this, Anderson, social hour? The circus? It'll take more than that," he waved at the aliens with the flick of a hand, "to rescue her career. Yours, of course, is already dead."

"Ambassador," Anderson started, and Udina relished how the washed-up soldier was straining to keep his voice in check with balled fists at his side, "First, this is not a circus." Anderson's face was centimeters from his, putting him in range of the Captains spittle and alcohol drenched breath. Rage as he might, Anderson was a leashed pet, and they both knew it. He gave the tiniest curl of a smile as Anderson took a step back, unclenched his fists, and continued with eyes narrowed in contempt, "And second, we now have evidence. Real evidence about Saren."

"I wish you'd get over yourself, Anderson, and your... inadequacy under pressure." Udina turned his back on Anderson and sat at his desk.

"This isn't about me, Ambassador," he heard Anderson almost growl above him, "this is about Saren, Geth, and a danger to all of Citadel space. If the future of humanity in the Spectres is caught up in that, so be it. Of course, if you and your... friends are content to let the Council continue to overlook humans..."

Before responding, Udina gauged his audience---Anderson's crew at attention of course, damn robots from the Systems Alliance; a Krogan leering from the corner; an observant C-Sec Turian with crossed arms; and a Quarian, but one never really knew about them. In front of this menagerie was not the right time to put Anderson in his place. "Fine, what have you got?"

"Tali?" Anderson turned to the female Quarian. Udina didn't bother stand for a space gypsy likely hawking false information. The only reason humanity hadn't had to bribe the Quarians to get their Flotilla of floating cast-off garbage out of Sol was that the Systems Alliance had mined it bare already. An honest species, Udina thought, wouldn't hide their faces. He looked her up and down, one eyebrow arched. Their females were, however, shapely.

"Very well, Quarian, what is it?" he demanded.

"Her name is Tali, sir," chimed in Shepard. As she held his gaze, he felt his cheeks redden and shoulders stiffen. He'd not brook her insolence much longer.

"Well?"

"It's a recording, Ambassador, that I retrieved from a Geth memory core," the Quarian answered, her voice quavering behind its artificial amplifier. Udina rested an arm on his chair and crossed his legs. Here comes the con, he thought.

"I thought Geth cores were erased when they deactivate. How could a girl like you manage to get data off of it?"

The Quarian took half a step back from him, turned her visor to Shepard, and then back to him. "I assure you it is genuine, sir. I would gladly provide you the data so you can authenticate it yourself. Perhaps you recall my people designed and built the Geth; I'm something of a specialist myself. Perhaps if you heard it?"

Udina heaved a sigh. "Yes, yes, fine. Let's get this over with."

The Quarian manipulated her omni-tool's interface with her bizarre three-fingered hand. It was the unnatural hands and angle of the knees, like that of Turians, that Udina found repulsive. The recording crackled:

"Shepard preserved the evidence of our Eden Prime incursion. She may also have accessed the beacon," a low, dulcet, beguiling female voice intoned.

A recorded primal scream pierced the air. "She cannot live," responded a voice with Turian subharmonics. "Even if she survives a short while, we are closing in on the Conduit."

"And," the female voice finished, "the return of the Reapers."

Udina felt the eyes of humans and aliens alike on him in the hushed room. He frowned. He could silence the Alliance personnel to buy time to replace Shepard, but detaining the others was beyond even his powers. He considered the expressionless soldier with the blazing hair and piercing eyes, finally turning away to shut his terminal and grab his Citadel Tower credentials. Everyone could be broken, given enough time.

"Anderson," he said, "with me, now! You," he pointed back to Shepard as he and Anderson were almost out the door, "bring her to the Tower once you're cleared. The Council is in session, and they will hear this."

A renowned Spectre charged with treason, with himself, Donnell Udina of Earth as the one to present the evidence and secure justice for all the humans killed on Eden Prime? He would schedule interviews with all the major networks on the elevator ride up. This could also placate Terra Firma, whose own Spectre candidate would have to wait. Anderson's career was over, and Shepard's would never recover, but he would rise. Hero today, First Human Councilor tomorrow. He straightened his shoulders, but then felt the armhole cut again. Damn Asari always think they're better than everyone. An Asari and a Turian killing human colonists? Udina bristled. He'd have his revenge. Humanity would.


	18. Squad

If you were this close to people, Ashley thought in the elevator, you should be taking a family photo or dancing at the club. She had jammed herself in the corner, preferring that the railing stab into her back than any of the present noxious company. At least they'd be out of her hair after the Council hearing, and she'd be groundside with new grunts, hoofing a new patrol, or maybe hunting down Saren with Shepard: human colonies, human problem, human solution. Aliens never gave a crap, anyway, or the Council would've at least sent aid to Eden Prime for rebuilding instead, as scuttlebutt had it, just whisking away what was left of her friends. Anger made her hands itch for a target. Instead, Ashley's huff caused the Quarian to shift, and purple fabric brushed her chin. Alenko, too, glanced back at her; she rolled her eyes. He lifted his shoulders in a tiny, careful shrug. He probably supported galactic unity, humans joining Citadel forces, all of that. Galactic unity was offending her nose. The doors opened and fresh air rushed in. Ashley heaved a deep breath.

Garrus breezed past the diplomatic detail flanking the elevator---two armed Turians, of course, at perfect attention. Here in the dark Citadel Tower, he picked out similar officers on each staircase, links in a protective chain terminating at the petitioner's level. With their typical ignorance of defensive positions, Asari had obscured each landing with landscaping---grass and boulders---and insisted on not lighting the recesses to the sides of the central stair. With a fist on his chest, he gazed upward, rendering a silent salute to the snipers hidden well beyond even Turian natural vision. At least one would be following their group through a scope; others would be lipreading to catch dirt for an investigation. A sympathetic pain twinged in his neck as he remembered the interminable boredom as he had, like them, silently placed his crosshairs on corrupt officials spinning tales... without pulling the trigger. As they processed upwards, he overheard an officer directing a diplomat to the nearest aircar taxi line. Spirits forbid he ever get stuck up here again.

The last thing the Council wanted to see today or any day, Wrex was certain, was a Krogan Battlemaster on the dais. When he noted that they were in session in person today, Wrex imagined with a low growl of pleasure how his fingers would curl around the Valern's neck as he lifted him off the ground. The scrawny amphibians deserved long, slow, messy deaths after tinkering with Krogan genetics. He could take the guards---Wrex sneered down at an officer babbling about transit---but getting from the petitioner's ring up to where the Councilors or their holograms stood, well, that would be a different matter. Snipers, grenades... he wouldn't be surprised to find a trap door dropping rowdy petitioners through the glass ceiling of the atrium below. Though the wave of violent thought passed, Wrex noticed unarmored Turians, Salarians, Asari, and Humans refused to meet his eye. Several backpedaled. Clearly they didn't let Krogan up here often to remind them of their galactic mistake. Good thing, too, or there probably would be less intact glass and more fires. "Wrex, Garrus," he heard Shepard say as they finally approached the metal gangway, "there's only going to be room for a few of us up there, and Tali and I have to go."

Wrex watched Garrus tilt his head forward in assent before the Turian spoke: "Politics, bo-ring. Never gets anything done, anyway."

"No problem for me Commander. I'm their worst nightmare. Just ask 'em. I'll make sure Garrus doesn't fall asleep." At Wrex's back slap, Garrus stumbled and swore. "Though I can't promise he won't trip. Heh heh heh."

"Tali?" Tali's reply choked in her throat. She simply nodded. She stared up for a moment, her stomach churning at the sheer size of the open indoor space. Few Quarians had journeyed into these chambers, even before the Council left them to rot---to, as Tevos had then put it, "suffer the natural consequences of their actions." Even given careful genetic management and arranged pairings, those consequences would soon be genocide, but no one cared. Udina, like so many others, found her repellent for existing. At first, Tali had been angry. Now, well, she didn't bother explaining to Williams that her headscarf was not only clean, but woven of material that naturally resisted odors and the microbes that cause them. Her Turian landlord her called her a filthy scavenger. Her pulse quickened as she remembered the Salarians in the alley, who would have killed her after... No, Tali was no longer angry. But the constant disgust and mistrust dragged on her like a Volus ship's grav field. Her pang of fear spread to her spurs. Tali longed for the pressure of her aunt's envirosuit on her own, and the tight, bright, crowded decks of the Rayya.

"Alenko, Williams, I can take one. Volunteer?" Kaidan glanced at Williams. Protocol dictated that the most senior soldiers represent the Systems Alliance, but she could provide eyewitness testimony from Eden Prime.

"Go ahead, Lieutenant. Politicians are above my pay grade." Despite Williams' sly smirk, he straightened his uniform, ran his fingers through his hair, and stood a little taller.

"I'm with you, ma'am," he answered Shepard. What a choice of words. Kaidan inwardly slapped his forehead as he took his formal position slightly behind the Commander's left side. I'm with you? His eyes strayed to her form, now coiling and uncoiling in movement, brutal and efficient, just as it had been in battle. Though she was too far ahead for him to sense her biotic field, his skin tingled. A reaction he recognized from the distant past sprinted through him, quickening his heart and breath. His face heated in recognition, and he suddenly felt queasy. He had not thought it would ever return. She had coaxed biotic energy out of him on Eden Prime, he remembered with a twinge near his amp, and now this. He quickly mentally rehearsed diplomatic greetings and Council meeting conventions to focus.

Anderson beckoned, "C'mon you three, Udina's already started!" He took in Shepard's squad here and on the landing below: a Krogan Battlemaster, a Turian sharpshooter, a Quarian enginner, and her two subordinates---a soldier's soldier and a powerful sentinel. With a ship like the Normandy and Spectre status, she'd be independent of Earthgov, and respected enough to help him take down Udina when the time was right. Anderson's fist still ached from where he had, after speaking to Hackett, dented his desk. As they stood behind the shrill Udina, whom Anderson visualized falling from the plank with a crash, Anderson felt Shepard's icy still creep into his bones. He glanced at her in profile: lean, expressionless, almost, he felt, haunted. He hoped Chakwas had a plan; if Eden Prime didn't ruin her, if her levels could be stabilized, she would be an even more fearsome force.

"Ambassador Udina," Tevos's rich tones filled the room. "What does Humanity have to bring before the Council today?"

"Councilors, on behalf of Earthgov, I wish to reopen the investigation of Saren," Udina said.

"The Council already considered the matter," Sparatus returned, his mandibles awave. "Your 'evidence' then was grossly incomplete."

"Unless" the Valern continued, inclining his slender head, "you have further findings to share?"

"Now," Udina waved the Quarian's optical disk at the Council for all the three levels of onlookers circled in the tall chamber above them to see. He would reenact it later for the reporters outside. "Now, I have proof. Proof that your Spectre, Saren, was behind the attack on Eden Prime. You," he pointed to the Quarian, "show them." As she had in his office, she readied her omni-tool. In the utter quiet of the room, he heard his own breaths. As Saren and the woman's voice announced their work at Eden Prime with the "Reapers," Udina crossed his arms, but soon regretted it as his suit cut into his underarms again. The Council could not afford to ignore this public display, and, he smirked as the recording finished, it established Shepard as having accessed the beacon. With her confidence in her vision, discrediting her would be easy. He heard gasps and hushed whispers echoing down as the Councilors conferred. He rocked slightly, heel to ball in his leather dress shoes, with satisfaction.

Tevos spoke, "Your evidence is incontrovertible. Saren will be stripped of his privileges and rank as a Spectre, and pending his capture, we will renew our investigation into his activities."

"That is not enough," Udina barked, raising his fist at them. "Human colonies are at risk, the Geth are on the move. We need support!"

"Ambassador," Sparatus responded, his subharmonics dripping with disdain, "Humanity knew that they were settling colonies. We can't just burn eezo sending the Fleet on a wild chase after Saren. We need to plan." When the Councilors then did not confer, Udina realized they had prepared for his request. They had prepared to deny it. They had appeared in person to let him have his moment. But why?

"If you will not protect us, what can you do to assure Saren will be stopped?"

"The apprehension of Saren is our concern," Valern paused to consider. "And a Fleet is not the most efficient or effective use of Conucil resources to which, let us remember, Humanity does not contribute."

"If I may, Councilors," Havil interrupted. This space twisted her insides. Images of it floated up from memories that were and were not hers. Death screams and urgent pleas rang in her ears. "This is too important for us to bicker about ships, or even," she glared at Udina, "about colonies." She had not forgiven him for mentioning Mindoir. At the thought, more memories surfaced, with the acrid tang of smoke. She searched for safe horbor, settling on the Asari Councilor. "I saw one Reaper on Eden Prime," she locked with Tevos's blue eyes. "More in... in the beacon. They bring death and destruction at a scale," Havil remained fixed on the Asari, "a scale even I have not seen. If the Geth, if Saren are involved with them, we will need more than fleets."

Even at distance, the truth of Shepard's gaze dug at the roots of Tevos's crest. Feeling the constriction of her dress at the neck again, she nevertheless kept her eyes on the Human's. "Commander Shepard," she lied, "You cannot expect us to act on account of your vision. We need more evidence. What race occupies these ships, and why haven't we come across them before? It is the opinion of the Council that your 'Reapers' are a myth from the Prothean era. We cannot send a fleet to chase shadows. But," the other two Councilors, made the slightest of nods in her peripheral vision, "we are prepared to send you." As long, Tevos thought, as we need not send the Justicars after you first. She watched Shepard's face pale like a moon. Anderson, on the other hand, brightened. Perhaps the Council had misjudged him. No matter; those waves had broken on the shores of history long ago. "Lieutenant Commander Shepard of the Alliance Systems Navy," Tevos cleared her throat and ordered, "step forward."

With a single step, Havil brushed by Udina, taking the center place before the Council. "It is the decision of this Council," she heard, "that you are to be given the rights and responsibilities of a Spectre."

"Spectres are not made, they are chosen. Born in the fires of battle, they are fierce warriors," recited Valern. Flames licked at Havil's skin, and a scream died in her throat.

"They are full of courage, determination, self-reliance. They are the right hand of the Council, answering to our commands, instruments of our will." Acid burned down Havil's face and torso, liquefying her flesh.

"Spectres bear a great burden: they are the keepers of Galactic peace, both our first and last lines of defense, a beacon of hope," said Sparatus. An itch broke down the scar from Havil's temple to her mouth, and she wanted for her rifle, her knife.

"You are the first human Spectre, Commander. It is a great accomplishment for you and your species," said Tevos. "Your first mission is to find Saren and bring him to answer for his crimes." Havil's shoulder throbbed where Dr. Michel had repaired it.

"We will forward relevant files to Ambassador Udina," Sparatus finished.

"This meeting of the Council is adjourned," said the Salarian. Havil watched the three file out.

"Anderson," Havil clawed through the pain, hearing Udina faintly as if he were far away, "Come, we have lots of work to do. Shepard's going to need a ship, a crew." She alone was still facing where the Council had been when at a tap on her shoulder she spun around with her hand aglow.

"Commander," Anderson looked pointedly at her biotic display. "Commander Shepard, relax. Things won't be ready for a couple of days. I need you fit." He pointed to her shoulder and then to her head. "We don't know what the beacon did, but you were a mess before that." Havil opened her mouth to protest---Anderson, who still or again smelled of drink was one to talk---, but the Captain ploughed ahead. "Dr. Chakwas has offered two options: immediate chemical treatment on the Normandy for hyperarousal and sleep deprivation for PTSD," he read quietly off his omni-tool, "or behavioral treatment pending assignment. The latter is only good if you refrain from combat for 72 hours and seek out social integration while on the Citadel."

Havil's mind snapped shut, as it had during all threats of Alliance therapy. "Captain, permission to---"

"Denied," Anderson growled. "Doctor's orders come for us all, Commander. Choose."

"Behavioral, sir."

"Good." Anderson tapped her selection into a message to Chakwas. "Recruit your new friends," he waved toward the group on the landing below, "to the Normandy. The Alliance won't commit additional troops to a Council Spectre, so you'll need them. Now take the night off, for real this time. That's an order."

Havil did not want to corral this talented but untrained group of aliens. Havil did not want therapy. Havil did not want to be the smiling female marine telling the galaxy all was well in the cold expanse of space. Nothing, she knew as bile rose in her throat along with those blank dark, four-eyed faces in her mind, would be well again. No shrink could fix that. Only death would.

Sideburns stepped on the gangway. "Uh, Commander?"

"Yes, Lieutenant?" she stared into his open, kind face, another problem she didn't want to deal with.

"Just..., ah" he faltered. Havil traced with her eyes a ray of light from Widow, the system's star, that had just slanted into the chamber from windows high above and filtered back towards the elevator, just dusting the top of Alenko's hair.

"Just?"

"Nothing, ma'am."

"Good. Keep it that way." She scowled. "We should go."

Williams was waiting for them. "So, who's ready to party? Captain said it's an order, right?" Havil felt the pressure of memory and emotion welling up, aching to seep through her pores. She shoved it all down, choosing, this time, to press her bad arm until her vision nearly went white.


	19. Williams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ashley Williams doesn't know Captain Anderson gave Havil an order to spend time making human connections. Williams is the one who finds a connection, and something to take everyone's mind off how bad Shepard and Alenko are at enjoying themselves.

With her teeth, Ashley pulled the quarter lime from the tiny sword---strangely barbed, she thought---that had kept it from obscuring the rim of her michelada. She squeezed it in, liking the tart juice from her fingers: real lime juice. When the chili and salt hit her tongue, followed quickly by the beer, lime juice, and hot sauce, Ashley smiled and closed her eyes. For a moment she could feel sand between her toes and the ocean night breeze on her skin and hear the teasing of her sisters about her BDU tan. "Barque of phosphor on the palmy beach, move outward into heaven, into the alabasters and night blues," she spoke softly to herself, unsurprised that neither Shepard nor Alenko responded.

The music drummed through the bar with views over the Ward arms almost as good as Joker's from the Normandy's cockpit, and Ashley felt the pull of the bass in her hips tempting her to abandon the strangest promotion party ever. Shepard was staring out at the wards with a frown, and Alenko was trailing a finger through a water ring on the table. Despite her attempts at conversation, the two officers hadn't said much since the Commander asked them to sign into cocktail hour, verbally recording their names and service numbers on Shepard's omni-tool.

Shepard had decided on Flux, one stop for all your night life needs, aside from amiable companions: restaurant, night club, bar, and casino. It was a little upscale for Ashley's tastes, but she wasn't going to question orders that included beer and hot sauce, especially when the beer was this good. Without the distraction of chit chat, she quickly found the bottom of her michelada.

"So... anyone need another?" she asked. Shepard's green stare cut through the pleasant haze obscuring Williams' prefrontal cortex. The Commander-Spectre---Ashley would let some desk jockey somewhere figure out the proper address---tossed off a shot of whiskey that until then, had been calling to Williams for rescue. Shepard's face didn't register Ashley's disappointment. If anything, Ashley decided, the Commander's drawn brows conveyed anger. Better to err on the safe side and get the woman more whiskey. "I'll take that as a yes. Lieutenant?"

Alenko paused his tabletop ruminations and just shook his head.

"And that's a no. You know what," Ashley pointed, "I'm gonna get you something anyway. You need it." She jaunted over to the bar, happy to escape the most dour officers to ever have been ordered to drink. Ashley didn't hang around officers much---they had an allergy to her last name---but they sure weren't ordered to party. At least it wasn't a perk Donkey had mentioned when he insisted on recommending her for officer training. Of course, she hadn't heard back. Too bad all her references were dead. She suddenly longed to be sitting around a big fire on the beach, listening to her sisters gossip about who was eyeing whom at school like it was all that mattered.

"Hey, soldier,can I help you?" Ashley heard.

"Another round for me and my friends there," she tossed her head their general direction. Ashley didn't need to be a biotic to feel the energy between the two. She'd seen that look on Alenko's face. They should just hook up now and get it over with, before the Normandy shipped out and trapped them all on a tiny metal box with no room for running away. There were regs, but anyone stationed in a unit long enough knew things happened anyway. Heck in the 212, Ashley thought, and then desperately needed a drink for the scratch in her throat.

"For the first human Spectre and her crew?" Ashley raised her eyebrows in surprise. The barkeep had been watching her. "Sure thing. This one's on me."

"Well, gee, thanks," Ashley said. "But," she managed a whisper in close, "how did you know?"

While selecting liquors, measuring, and pouring, the bartender leaned over with her own whisper, "Oh, in my line, we hear things pretty quickly. But I can keep it quiet if you'd like."

"Yeah, that might help for now. The XO doesn't really want to deal with the hoopla just yet."

"Got it. You all right?"

Ashley wouldn't have normally said anything, but something about the woman set her at ease. Her shoulders slumped. "Yeah, yeah. Just been a rough few days. Thanks."

"No problem. Not my best days either, but we do what we have to. Now, what can I make for you?" The bartender slid two expensive looking cocktails, one for each officer, to Ashley.

"Just, ah, another michelada. That first one took me back."

"From the mid-American continent?"

"Nah, colony world. My sisters are still there, actually."

As Ashley had spoken, she noticed a tremor had struck the bartender's hand. She cursed and wiped stray Worcestershire sauce off the counter. A Turian down the bar banged a talon, insisting on his swill. At a slight five foot four, with short brown hair and brown eyes, the woman reminded Ashley of her sister. The similarity, coupled with the woman's sudden distress, bypassed Ashley's already dimmed prefrontal cortex and hit her straight in the gut.

"Um, ma'am," Ashley started, "I uh, don't want to pry, but are you ok? Someone bothering you?"

"Oh me? I'm fine. Don't worry. Your drink," she said, adding a shot of something, "with a little extra for you."

Fat chance she was fine. Ashley left the triangle of drinks on the bar. "It's just, you remind me of my sister. I'd be happy to take care of him for you." Ashley indicated the only other customer currently at the bar, the Turian, with an inappropriate finger. But at "sister," the bartender visibly stiffened again. "Oh... I see." Ashley checked back and saw Alenko and Shepard continuing to ignore her and each other, "is he bothering... your sister?"

The barkeeper looked down at the bar, intently rubbing a cloth---needlessly on modern anti-microbial, anti-fungal, anti-stain surfaces---on the section in front of Williams. "Oh, don't worry about him, he's harmless. It's the uniform. Listen, my sister Jenna is mixed up in some dangerous guys for some C-Sec operation. I want to get her out, but she won't listen to me."

"What the frack. Wanna know what I did when my little sis had a guy from her school bothering her? Soon as she told me in a vid chat, I took leave, booked a flight to Earth, and was there the next morning to walk her to school."

"And?"

"And then he came around, tried to make a move on her, and she kicked his ass black and blue."

"Sounds like my sister, Jenna. I'm Rita."

"Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, nice to meet you." The woman's hand was small and soft in Ashley's own.

"Too bad I can't just watch my sister beat someone up." Rita leaned in close and whispered, "She's undercover---arms dealers---but I think she's in over her head. Whenever I bring it up, she says she can handle it. But we're not soldiers, not like you. Jenna and I, we just tend bar, you know?" That kind of undercover work was for professionals. Professionals, Ashley thought, like marines. "I, I don't know why I'm telling you this, just... enjoy your night, ok?"

"You're not getting rid of me that easy. Where's your sister---maybe we can talk some sense into her, or beat some sense into her handler."

"Hey, Rita! Drinks!" Williams clenched her teeth at the call of the drunk Turian's grating subharmonics.

"Gotta go, sorry. You, uh, might want to grab a drink at Chora's Den, re-opened a couple hours ago," said Rita.

"So... new girlfriend, Williams?" Alenko had by now nursed his beer to death. Seeing the sadness hood his eyes, she laughed.

"Naw, not really my thing," she shot back. He and his ass on the other hand, were he not besotted with Shepard, not her commanding officer, and also not completely worthless in a bar... She set the drinks in front of Shepard and Alenko and took a sip of hers. Heavenly, and, as she felt the fire down her throat, with an extra kick. Rita knew her stuff. "But I did pick up a project of sorts-C-Sec, undercover civilian in distress, arms dealers..."

Shepard had mechanically grabbed the drink, continuing her futile watch out over the wards, but her head snapped back Ashley's ways at the mention of guns. The Commander lowered the beverage that Ashley had proffered and that had almost made it to her lips. "Arms dealers?"

"You're wasting good free drink, there, Commander." Williams let another a swig of her own dance in her mouth before swallowing it down. She grinned. "Damsel in distress, hopping dance club, chance to check out Chora's Den with less gunfire?"

Alenko had raised his eyebrows, making little ridges on his forehead. "You're kidding, right?"

"About booze, boys, and beats, Lieutenant? Never!" Ashley answered. The... distractions of the club would be good medicine for him, even if he didn't know it, which he probably didn't. Guys could be such blockheads. Before Shepard could stand, Ashley downed the rest of her michelada. Damn, that was good.

She followed Shepard and Alenko out, but not without first turning back to throw Rita, who was watching them leave, a wink.

I'll get that sister of yours out of trouble, she thought. You can count on me.


	20. Alenko

Where we've been so far: While Shepard, Alenko, and Williams endured prescribed social hour, Williams met Jenna at Flux and promised to the three would help the bartender's sister.

Alenko's beer hadn't managed to still his roiling thoughts. Though stretching out to manipulate mass and space, he flexed his forearm absently, filled him with power, confidence. He was good, and he knew it. It was a feeling he had been avoiding for years, pressing it, and his talents, deep under a surface of control. Last time the blood and biotic energy coursed through him this way, he'd also felt... he felt he'd need much more than beer to make it go away.

Shepard's aura, also undimmed by her drinks, buzzed in Kaiden's senses as she strode ahead of him with the raw, animalistic power that matched her biotic prowess. They both let Williams, who clearly had been enjoying herself and didn't benefit from the hyperactive metabolism that had his stomach growling already, keep a running commentary liberally sprinkled with expletives about C-Sec and Human-Turian relations.

If Chora's Den was under new management, Kaidan had a tough time telling. The same neon lights buzzed and flickered above, and the same bass vibrated the floor below. As the door slid open, the treble and midtones of the music spilled out, along with the scent of many species and their beverages of choice. His eyes drawn to motion in the din, Kaidan froze. Asari, barely clothed, writhed above the bar. "Whoa. Some place," he uttered, without realizing his mouth was open.

"Lieutenant, you don't get out much, do you?" Williams playfully punched him in the shoulder, which reminded him that Shepard's own shoulder was probably a nest of painful muscles, just like the ones, he felt stiffness already, would quickly be at the back of his head and neck.

"Ok, I've got a plan," Ashley started when they'd found a table, Kaidan noted, with ample view of several dancers.

"Let's hear it, after you sign in for the Captain's orders." Shepard proffered her active omni-tool. As Alenko recorded his name, rank, and ID number, he straightened up a bit. Never had he been sent to counseling or issued an admonition or reprimand. Never had he disobeyed an order or broken a regulation. He took a deep breath while Williams recited her own credentials. Under Shepard, Alenko thought, would be no different.

"Alenko," Williams turned to him, her eyes crinkled with a grin. He couldn't believe she was enjoying this. "You go flash that disarming, slightly nervous smile, get us something to drink, and try to see if she'll cop to being a damsel in distress? Play Prince Charming there to rescue her, maybe flirt a little, you know."

He let his his fingers run through his soft hair. "I don't---" he started, hoping the heat he felt burning his cheeks and the back of his neck wasn't visible.

"Don't what? Just do that thing you just did with your hair, and show those pearly whites," Williams teased.

"Commander?" He chanced a look at Shepard, who, from her distracted flick of a hand, was not going to rescue him. He followed Shepard's gaze to a Turian slumped over a table. At least she hadn't been listening to Williams.

From the safety of the circular bar, he watched Shepard approach the Turian with a shove on the shoulder. Kaidan tensed his arm, ready to dispense a lift just in case. But the Turian just clapped Shepard---on her bad shoulder---and she sat down. By the time Jenna got around to him, the blue sheen had flickered out, replaced by sweat on his palms. What was the protocol for convincing a civilian UC to meet her handler and get out?

"Hi," he said, "three beers, please." He forced his cheeks up in a smile, and without even thinking about it, ran his fingers through his hair.

"Hi," Jenna shifted her weight to one foot, placed a hand on the bar, and put the other to her chin. "Good hair, nice teeth, unwrinkled clothes, trouble slouching... Alliance, am I right?"

Kaidan suddenly felt the pull of his shoulders and back keeping him in military posture. He tried to round them. "Yes, ma'am. Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, at your service." Alenko hated small talk to begin with, and since the Citadel didn't have weather, he was out of material. She set his beers on the bar and was about to turn to another customer. "Definitely not a C-Sec guy, if you know what I mean." Jenna stiffened a bit, then made a mess sliding the beers directly in front of him.

She leaned over to whisper so fiercely he felt the stream of her breath. "No, I wouldn't know what you mean, and if my sister sent you, just stay out of it, ok?"

"I, um, I don't know what you're talking about." Kaidan smoothed his shirt and shrugged.

"You're a terrible liar, Alenko. Just have your drinks and leave me alone." Kaidan noticed a Krogan bouncer had stopped leaning against a wall and was staring at him with one eye. Jenna left without a word.

Williams eagerly grabbed a pint from him. Shepard---he glanced around---was still chatting with the Turian.

"Miss her already, LT? She'll be right back, said something about General Septimus?"

"You have had too much to drink, Williams." She raised the remaining half of her beer. "To the 212th, may God have mercy on your sorry asses." She guzzled her beer, and traded the empty glass for his full one. "I just know how to have a good time. And I don't have your metabolism. You, however," he felt her finger tapping the table, "seem to be enjoying yourself just fine, between the dancers and, well," she tossed her head toward Shepard, "you know."

"Like I told Jenna, I don't know what you're talking about." He stared intensely at a floor tile.

"Did she also tell you that you suck at lying?" He sighed. Did women have some kind of secret code? "I'll take that has a yes," Williams sniggered. Kaidan's skin was crawling with embarrassment, and the spot of pain in his sinuses threatened.

"She's pretty... pretty off limits, LT." Williams openly laughed now. "But hey, I'll give you this, she's special. Never met anyone so cold, but so powerful. I'd still follow her into hell if she asked, even without her saving my ass." Williams studied him, tilting her head to a side, and Kaidan's legs itched to get away.

"Regs, Williams. Doesn't matter." He didn't need ribbing from an inferior about something that could never go anywhere anyway. It was a nice thought---he glanced over at Shepard, now confidently clasping the Turian General's talon. He could just brush aside the shock of hair that now fell over one of her striking green eyes. Even in her civvies she was obviously lithe and athletic. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. The thought thrilled through him, even as his headache threatened to blossom into terror.

"True enough, LT. But... we all know it happens anyway."

"This conversation is over."

"Aye-aye, LT. It can't hurt to look," Williams feigned a salute with another laugh loud enough to cut through the music.

Despite himself, his heart shuddered as Shepard wove her way back to them. "Hey, Commander, who's the Turian?" Williams nearly shouted.

"You two first. Lieutenant?"

"No luck, Commander."

Shepard considered him with thinly drawn lips and sat. "General Septimus won't be bothering anyone, including that Elcor you ran into---"

"Xeltan, ma'am."

Instead of acknowledging him, Shepard studied her chrono, which had started blinking. "Anderson's mission finished," the disgust was obvious as she took in the dancers and passed a sniff at the beer, pushing it towards Williams. "I'm going to stop by Sha'ira's, finish that, then write the day up at the Normandy. You two are off to," she waved at the scene, "whatever."

Alenko felt the sharp pain of Williams's heel crushing the top of his foot. The woman just smiled slyly at him, wiggling her eyebrows. He couldn't stay here, and he couldn't go with Shepard. Another impact drilled into his foot, and the wave of pain jolted all the way up to his head.

"Uh, come with you, ma'am?"

Shepard's stare was cold and expressionless. "We should go. Williams?"

Williams set down her second empty glass, pointed to a man taking in an Asari lap dance in the corner, and said, I think I'm going to try to pick up a few pointers. See you flip-side." Williams danced her way over to the Asari to join in. He'd have to avoid her and Joker.

Kaidan stepped up to the bar to pay their tab on Anderson's dime. "Hey, Jenna," the bartender stared coolly, "Keep an eye on my friend?" He added slipped her a generous tip, and Jenna's shoulders softened. She just nodded. `

He followed Shepard out. Through the light haze of another migraine's aura, he watched her muscles rolling with each step. When she suddenly shifted backwards, he bumped into her. A shock arced where they touched.

When he recovered, he saw the Turian whisper something in her ear. Then he shoved them out of the way, shouting, "Stupid Humans, watch where you're going."

Shepard dealt him a withering look, and he stepped back a pave. "Sorry, ma'am. What was that all about?"

"I'm not sure; he said something about meeting down in C-Sec tomorrow."

"Probably..." Alenko started, thinking out loud as they made their way to the Presidium elevator.

"Her handler," Shepard finished for him. Alenko just nodded, wishing away the impact of her body on his and the sting of energy from their fields. He closed his eyes, hearing only the subtle whirr of the elevator, whose advertisement reel was blessedly broken. The thrill, pain, and shock all swirled, and he leaned on the rail to try to halt the dizziness. He needed dark, quiet, alone. He tipped his head back on to the wall, rubbing his forehead to ease some of the coming tension. Through the onrushing pain, he could hear her breaths and the rustle of her shirt as she stretched out her injured arm and feel her field when her hand strayed in range. He heard Shepard, as if from far away, step through the open door.

He followed.


	21. Sha'ira

"Yes, Nelyna?" Sha'ira closed her mind to the eddies and swirls of mass and energy around her and settled lightly back to the floor. She rose, pulling once at this evening's black gown to release it into its full flow. The young attendant's voice sounded over her private terminal.

"Doyenne, I beg grace for the intrusion. We have word Commander Shepard met with General Oraka, and is on her way. A message from him awaits you."

"Very good, Nelyna. And the Elcor?"

"There has been activity between the General's terminal and the Elcor embassy, along with a substantial credit transfer."

Sha'ira smiled out the door to the now darkened tiny garden behind her chambers and clasped her sheathed hands behind her back. The Commander's success would lend the Human confidence, though in truth, Shepard had ceded power to her.

"Does she come alone?"

"The male, Alenko, accompanies her."

"Engage same protocol as last time, Nelyna."

"So it will be done, Doyenne."

Sha'ira's initial touch confirmed what her well-honed instincts knew about Shepard, who was too rigid, too invested in control to want purely for the physical moment. Shepard did not come for the resplendent beauty Sha'ira admired as it reflected off the plastiglass, a loveliness inherited, cultivated and, Sha'ira wryly curled her lips as she luxuriated in her own body, in some placed artificially enhanced. The layers of defenses Sha'ira found erected in Shepard's mind would certainly also shield the Human from her affection for the man who followed her like a Thessian porpoise pup swimming under its mother. But deep in her psyche, Sha'ira had sensed, desire lay.

The waters in the artificial falls of the garden whispered as she opened the door. Shedding her sandals, Sha'ira tread slowly, feeling the cool stone paint her soles slowly from heel to toe with each step. She would not, then, have to feign interest in the pale Human woman marred by torn and broken flesh. Repulsive as the scars were, Shepard's deeply set lily green eyes stirred Sha'ira with their intensity. Her touch revealed its source: pain. Humans were strange creatures, to let the memories of their already short lives consume them even as they attempted to lock them away. Asari learned to dwell in the present, and visit the past when necessary, as it was now. As she recalled the clustered flashes of destruction, and death in Shepard's mind, Sha'ira paused. She let the scent of Illian spring fire flowers---musky, subtle, and with the hint of home's of brackish seas---replace the singed flesh.

The artificial moon of the Presidium shone grey-green in the garden, casting networks of shadows below and silvery highlights on each leaf, stone, and ripple. She ran a covered hand over the long, sharp spear of knifewort---harmless if you touch only the flat of the leaf---and then let a long black glove slide down each arm and laid them, neatly crossed, on a stone bench.

No, the Commander did her bidding because her pain drove her to the impossible, and to her own mind inscrutable, task of smoothing the universe's ocean. Atoning for her wrongs, or trying to restore the lost, it didn't matter. Over the centuries Sha'ira had watched all such crusaders die. Her house knew to wait for their moment to correct just one wrong, and to correct it permanently.

Everything else was, well, the business of waiting, of protecting, of biding time. From the streak of light momentarily slicing through her chamber, Sha'ira knew tonight's business, determining what Shepard might know, and whether it would threaten the Asari Republic, had just arrived.

She neared the garden door, which silently opened. "It is my pleasure to see you again, Commander," she said with a small bow. Shepard strode through the room with brutal human efficiency. They were not a beautiful race. "Or should I say... Spectre?"

"Commander is fine, ma'am."

The Human tag of deference bode well, as did the Commander's slightly more rounded shoulders, and the shading under her eyes.

"I appear to be in your debt. Not only did I receive a message from Septimus this evening, but it appears you have also placated the Elcor embassy."

She turned from her window and descended the two steps into the center of her office to Shepard. "That," she ran her fingertips down the large scar running down the woman's face, "is more than I asked for. Thank you." At the contact, memories of combat, the surge of excitement in danger, the gravity of fatigue and injury seared across their brief bond. Sha'ira kept her position, her face fixed, barely listening as Shepard replied.

"You are welcome, Sha'ira. It was my pleasure to render assistance. If that is all," the Commander began avoiding her eyes.

Sha'ira whispered into her ear, "It is not quite all, Commander. Given your service, I have a gift for you," at the rising of the Human's shoulders, Sha'ira added a gentle laugh. "A gift only of words, Commander."

When Shepard did not immediately reply, Sha'ira took Shepard's hands and closed her own eyes, searching. Shepard's mind rumbled with the deep crashing of breakers on the shore. Sha'ira plunged into the cold ocean that stung like acid, past layers of trained responses, through mazes of corpses both silent and yelling final cries, down to the ocean floor blazing with heat. At each step she found glimpses of parents, of pastoral life, of religious rites. There, in a crevasse, Sha'ira looked down into the roiling red-hot center. The faces there, their diamond heads, their four eyes, screamed at her. Large mechanical squid fell from the sky, burning. The message ended in silence, in death. Sha'ira nearly fell into the void below it, a featureless pit. She had seen that face, those eyes before. Not her, but her house, her progenitor all knew it.

From the inky deep, two green eyes stared. Shepard would know, soon. Sha'ira quickly dropped the woman's hands, searching for the carpeted floor with her toes, for the fake moon-light streaming in, for the limits of her body's curves in her dress, for the air moving through her crest.

The green eyes remained. Sha'ira must tell them something.

"I see your sadness. Pain. Loss. It drives you. It is your power, power that others will follow... without question. You will need it, and them, in the battles to come, Spectre."

The woman's eyes were cold, withdrawn. But Sha'ira knew the truth of the trouble boiling within, worse than even recorded in the Temple of Athame. She did not know, precisely what it meant, but she knew how it meant: despair.

"Thank you, ma'am." The Human tilted her head, a gesture of inquiry. Shepard had almost seen her walking in her memories. It was too close. The woman was not a danger, not to the Republic. But if the vision in her mind was correct, even what little of it Sha'ira understood, then the danger would come for them all. The Asari needed to know the details of the message. They needed Shepard's mind intact.

"You're very welcome, Commander." She took a step back and pulled a necklace over her head, grasping it in her hand for a moment as its foreign memories washed over her. "There is something else. This." She held the chain with a small pendant of silver metal at the bottom for Shepard's to hold, now carefully avoiding the woman's touch.

"What is it?"

"A trinket," Sha'ira called over her shoulder as she returned to the garden door. She turned again to Shepard. "I sense it is time to give it to you."

When the light from the outer door extinguished as it shut behind Shepard, Sha'ira filled her lungs with the garden's cool, humid air. After carefully replacing her gloves, she opened a channel with her omni-tool to T'amal. Shepard was no threat, but her ongoing functioning was critical, at least until she could understand the message and relay it herself, or would willingly open her mind to an Asari.

For the first, Sha'ira sighed, Shepard had to be broken, or she'd walk right into that abyss in her mind at the first opportunity just to escape the swirling currents of her pain. She called Nelyna.

"Yes, Doyenne?"

"Have the Humans departed?"

"Yes."

"Good. And our plant is in place?"

"Yes, she is currently holding position as planned."

"Good. I will be meditating, but please inform me when the mission is complete."

"So it will be done, Doyenne."

Sha'ira seated herself on the cool stones and crossed her legs. As Benezia was already assigned, it would fall to her daughter to pick up Shepard's pieces, access her mind, and decipher the beacon's message. It was a rough sea to ask the young T'Soni to cross, but such, Sha'ira thought, is our service to the Republic. We don't choose our mothers: they choose us as her distant mother, too, had once been chosen.

Liara would understand the stakes, especially after seeing her mother's pendant in Shepard's hands.


	22. Shepard

Havil deposited the pendant in a pocket, it chain slithering after. She had never gotten the hang of jewelry---even free now to wear it if she wanted. To call attention to yourself, she thought grimly, a few scars would do. They're combat safe to boot and kept men, and Asari, at a distance. Something about the Consort's touch, beyond her standing biotic reserve, made Havil's stomach fold in on itself.

She found Alenko again at Nelyna's fingertips, his eyes closed with corpse-like repose and pallor. The thought did not improve her queasiness. She rolled heel to toe with exacting quiet, and had nearly passed their booth when his rasping voice cut through, "Commander?"

She paused, caught, and then spun to face him, "Lieutenant?"

He hastily stood, nearly knocking over an adjacent chair, and smoothed his shirt as he joined her. "You weren't going to..."

Havil merely stared as he thanked the Asari.

"Never mind," he continued, falling into stride next to her while still rubbing his head. "Did you, ah, get everything squared away?"

"The General won't be waving his sword around the Presidium, and the Elcor diplomats have dropped their complaints." Havil declined to elaborate as the doors of yet another elevator entombed them. She rubbed lightly at her arm, the wound still aching. In the dead air, Havil heard Alenko's unease in the rustling of his clothes, restless like cattle before a storm.

When the elevator car finally released them, Havil glimpsed blue C-Sec uniforms. Her legs coiled into a crouch, and she crept over near the point officer, keeping to cover. Alenko, tensed and biotically charged, leaned into the crate barely large enough to shield them both, and she felt the pressure of his arm on her own,now tingling with their mingled charges. She fought the instinct to shake it off like a dog does mud.

"What is going on here?" Havil asked the nearest C-Sec officer.

"Shepard? Commander Shepard?" the C-Sec officer turned to her, then frowned at Alenko. Scars also meant everyone knew you. "Where have you been? We've been trying to reach you."

Havil realized the Consort's chamber must have some kind of damping field. "Situation report?" she asked.

"We've got a woman camped out back there. Said she heard about you on the news reports and won't talk to anyone, something about surviving Mindoir. She's armed but..." he took her into confidence with a low whisper. "Commander, she's suicidal. She could jump from there." A stack of crates obscured the woman's position, a small protruding section of the elevated walkway. "I have snipers," he pointed to the far side of the Normandy's berth, "but maybe you could talk to her? I've got a sedative," he said, handing her a syringe. "We haven't been able to get close enough to administer it."

Surviving Mindoir. The words slammed into Havil's chest. Her legs would not move, much less her mouth. There had been no survivors. The slave ships had been raided, and the colonists had been beaten, tortured. Every single one, save Havil, had been accounted for---dead. Those on the planet... the stench of burnt flesh filled her nostrils. 

"Commander, you know the regs on this. We don't go in, and definitely not when someone's armed," he turned to the officer, "Doesn't C-Sec have negotiators? A mental health professional?"

"Galactic law on the Citadel is not as, ah, charitable, Lieutenant," the officer answered. "I'm already trying the patience of my superiors as it is."

Havil heard only the crackling of flame. If she closed her eyes, the beacon's blood and limbs and screams flooded her. She flexed her arm to aggravate her wound and felt only searing acid. A look at Alenko's eyes, open now with alarm, though dulled in his own pain... no, there was no refuge there. There was no chill in the bay, only heat and smoke. She glanced out over the safety rail, and the twinkling lights of the ward arms by Citadel night became embers swirling.

She clung to the syringe in her suddenly sweaty palms and stood, keeping her eyes fixed on the fire line eating the crowns of the forest above. "I'm going."

"Commander, no one survived! It can't be---" Havil heard the tone, if not the word of Alenko's cry over the rushing wind driven by the heat and the pulsing of her heart in her ears. Unlike the dreams, which she always woke from, perhaps this time she would finally die on Mindoir, die like the rest.

Through the smoky haze, huddled against a tree, Havil saw a figure whose unkempt red hair was dotted with ashes of fallen embers. Her clothes were torn, dirty, and full of soot. Her bare feet soiled with Mindoir's black earth. She turned, and pointed a pistol at Havil.

"Don't come near her. You don't, don't!" the woman warned.

"We can't stay here," Havil gestured to the flames.

The woman kept the pistol up, her aim wavering as she turned to look into the distance.

"We have to go, go now, or they---" the large black eyes of a Batarian flickered in Havil's vision, but she couldn't see what he was doing.

"I... I know you. You have her hair, her eyes."

Havil stared into the green eyes so much like her own. Everyone on Mindoir, she had noticed even as a child, had red hair, green eyes... or was it red skin and four yellow eyes? This woman, she remembered, needed to come with her, needed to escape.

"I'm Havil. You?"

"Animals don't get names. They gave her numbers, symbols." The woman cringed. "Hot metal. Hissing. Steaming."

Branding, like livestock. Havil had watched her... her father singe the animals' hides. "How about your parents? Mom, or dad? I'm, I'm going to find mine. I didn't mean to be in the woods. What did they call you?"

"She remembers many people, like you, many things. Talitha, they called her." Talitha---a girl from another family a little younger than Havil, a girl who liked dolls, Havil suddenly remembered---rubbed her head with the back of her gun hand, but the fire still raged around them. Their line of escape was closing. 

"Talitha, can't you see? Let's get out of here!"

"Fires, smoke. The trees burning, black. Burning meat. Animals screaming. Screaming and then," Talitha put her hands over her eyes to try not to see and shook her head. Havil heard the screams too, piercing through the raging flames. "Then the hot metal, and wires in their brains." She was quiet a moment, and then in another voice, resumed, "She pretends to be dead. Dead doesn't work. But they know, put her in the cage and she doesn't even try to stop them."

Havil felt the soot singe her nostrils again, felt the smoke shorten her breath and the heat stagger her. Rough voices dragged bodies, around her. Circuits and blood flashed through her mind. Bile rose in her throat. The corpses, black, black as the eyes peering through the fire. "We can't stop them, there's too many. I, we, we have to run for it."

"No!" Talitha shouted. "She was stupid. She can blame. Go away and let her be stupid! She'd be better dead! She deserves dead!"

"But your parents, let's go run for them, find the elders, the big people." She coughed on the smoke.

"They yell, run, hide! They fight Masters, but Masters have fire and Daddy melts, and she can't look anymore. Stupid, she couldn't stop it, stupid! They are dead, Havil. Don't make her look them anymore."

"I can't, listen. I can't stop this fire. But we can go. Or... if you want to stay, let it burn us, then..." Havil felt the syringe in her hand. It would make surrender to the heat and smoke easy. "Here, I have this. Then it won't hurt you, and it will be over."

"It hurts anyway, Havil. It hurts when she---when I remember me." Havil watched her inject the drug and slump down against a tree. The fire ringed all around them. Havil sat next to her.

"Not long now," Havil muttered, hugging her knees to herself, and burying her face in one arm. She struggling for breath. She fingered the strange necklace falling out of her pocket, and as the tongues of flame drew near them both, slipped out of consciousness.


	23. Chakwas

Karin Chakwas preferred not to see the soldiers under her care regularly. It was nice, of course, to have someone like Jeff to look after each week, his commentary about cradle-robbing cougars aside. 

An unintelligible cry pierced her reflections, and she hurried to the bed of Commander Shepard, who as beating the air with thrashing limbs. While the Commander's emergence from catatonia was heartening, Chakwas did not want her to add to her head trauma or already significant contusions everywhere else. Once Shepard's sleep cycle passed, she reached under the medical bed, her thin practiced fingers quietly unrolling the restraining belts and fastening them first over the woman's hips, and then over her shoulders. The hand and foot straps for operations and hostiles she left unfastened.

She allowed herself to examine the sleeping Commander's face. Even now, once the episode had passed, the deep circles under the woman's eyes and the lines beginning to etch in her brows spoke to chronic turmoil. Chakwas ran her fingers through her own short, gray hair, coarse with age. The teenager Havil Shepard should not have passed her entrance psych exam, much less N7 screening, though Chakwas had no doubt Shepard was as skilled at lying to herself as she was to her evaluators. Her workup, however, could not deceive, and the physicians who'd been treating her hardly deserved the title for putting this broken woman on the battlefield again and again and again. 

And now, Chakwas gave a little sigh, recalling her orders from Anderson, she was to do the same. If Shepard did not decide to face her past, Chakwas reflected as she smooth a few spikes of the Commander's bright red spikes of hair, the mortality rates for extreme cases of PTSD were almost certain to claim her, either from lapse in battle or by her own hand. From the reports of the incident, she was lucky not to have been shot by the so-called survivor she sedated, and then doubly lucky not to have tumbled over the edge of the walkway, suspended high in the docking bay---an ignominious end for humanity's first Spectre. She laid a hand on Shepard's and whispered, "You have to choose life, Commander. I can't do that for you."

The subtle ping of an incoming message at her station returned Chakwas to her professional present. Plucking at the hem of her lab tunic to ensure it draped correctly, she turned. Suddenly her own nervous and adrenal systems spiked with the pressure on her arm from, she looked down, a hand tightly clamped there. "What---" Shepard's green eyes fixed on her for a moment, unknowing, and wide.

"Commander Shepard. You're aboard the Normandy in the Medical Bay. You're safe." She placed her hand on the Commander's shoulder, at which the entire bed shuddered as Shepard tried to shrug off the hand and sit up.

"Please relax, Commander," Chakwas genuinely inflected in her softest bedside tone. "I had to restrain you while you were asleep. You were... restless."

At this, Shepard sank back down into the bed and slowly released Chakwas's arm. The blood of broken capillaries was undoubtedly pooling between layers of her skin under her tunic, but she ignored it for now. 

"I understand, Doctor," Shepard covered her eyes with her hands. "I'm a danger, I get it."

"That's..." Chakwas began, before letting it drop. Shepard's insistence that she directly and personally caused the death of everyone around her was part of her Shepard's disordered ideation, one she couldn't challenge, not yet. "Let me loosen these. I'm going to slip my fingers under the shoulder restraints first," she narrated as she worked to avoid startling Shepard, "and then the hips. Please don't, however, sit up until you are ready."

With her limbs now free, Chakwas watched Shepard enact the familiar check of function, armament, and biotics. 

"How did I..." Shepard eased up to sitting, and gestured at the bed.

"Lieutenant Alenko carried you, Commander. It's becoming, dare I say," Chakwas smiled despite herself, "a bit of a habit." Shepard merely grunted. "While you get your bearings, would you mind if I took a look at your shoulder?" 

Shepard didn't flinch under exam, a sign of her frontal cortex's return to dominance. "This is healing nicely. The muscle fibers and blood vessels should be knit together in a few days, but only if you rest, Commander. Good work by whomever treated, but I'd rather you had come to me." 

"I didn't really have much choice, Doctor. Am I clear to return to... what is it," Shepard glanced at the time, "my sleep shift? It's been a long day."

Chakwas grabbed a data pad lying on the next bed over, and drew up an exam chair, offering Shepard the literal higher ground and clear sight lines to the door. The windows were already shuttered. 

"I'll take that as a no," Shepard observed with a sigh.

"Commander, Alenko briefed me on some of it, duelling with a Turian, firefights in the wards, meeting with the Consort," here Chakwas arched an envious eyebrow, "and negotiating with an armed woman just outside our door."

"Just doing my job, Doctor."

"Yes, I see that, despite my orders not to engage in combat. Physically, Commander, you're fine. Banged up a bit, but the injuries will heal. Mentally---"

Shepard tensed her shoulders and stared down at the Doctor. "Anderson already gave me orders. Let's just get this over with."

"Commander, has anyone shown you your brain activity lately?"

"No."

Chakwas handed over the results of the scan to Shepard, and pointed to some levels, carefully noting her patient's responses.  
"Shepard, these are your stress indicators---high---and some markers of biotic use commensurate with combat. Here are indicators that your neurons need deep sleep to really be firing properly. If I saw these levels on a soldier actively engaged in a fight, they would be, well, normal." Her she looked directly at Shepard. "I took them two hours ago. For a woman sleeping on my medbay bed, well, it's not sustainable."

Shepard titled her head. "What do you mean by sustainable?"

Chakwas paused. "I mean, Commander, that it's going to get you killed---"

"As long as it's just me, and not everyone else," Shepard interjected.

"Or you'll kill yourself."

"You are joking, right?" Shepard folded her arms.

"No, Commander. You repeatedly put yourself in the line of fire. You even have a medal for it. And while I appreciate your bravery, too much of that behavior is worrisome."

The Commander frowned. "I get the job done."

Chakwas did not want to press any issues too far this session, and she heard the message of the Commander's defensive posture and scowling face. Treatment protocol, however, as well as being a decent human being, required she at least present alternatives. "Maybe, Commander, there is more than the job to consider."

"Not in uniform, Doctor. Not even you can order that."

"No, Commander, but the Captain did." Over Shepard's derisive snort, Chakwas continued, "I cannot force you to want to feel better, Commander. And I cannot promise the process is easy. Quite the opposite, in fact. But if you can't get a handle on yourself," she tapped the brain scans, "you'll soon be either dead or unfit for active service. Even a Spectre needs a ship, a crew, and resources."

At this last point, Shepard closed her eyes and tilted her head back against the wall. Several more pings arrived at Chakwas's station. An analysis---a scan of Alenko's brain activity given his migraine---finshed with a satisfied chime. Shepard's chest rose and fell. And Chakwas waited.

When Shepard spoke, her voice was small and distant. She kept a hand over her eyes. "In my mind, Doctor, I see the end of everything, over, and over, and over again. You, me, humanity, the Council, everything. But," she gripped her face with both hands, "I don't know what it is, how to stop it. Just that there's something really important up here." She pointed to her temple.

What had the Prothean beacon had done to the Commander? An Asari meld would be quite useful now, as they had methods of addressing invasive memories transferred from others' minds. Command would never sign off on it as a treatment of a soldier with as much of Shepard's access to classified training. Finally, Shepard sighed, now pinching the bridge of her nose. "You're right. I thought, I hoped... that I wouldn't wake up here. I was just on Mindoir, just there, watching the flames crawl toward me, the shadowless bright of fire raging above and all around. I let the heat boil my skin, let myself choke on the smoke so I could join my mom, dad, sister, our whole community, my whole unit, Jenkins, and everyone I've ever killed---thousands. All dead. It's what I deserve."

The doctor opened her mouth to speak, but felt only sorrow's yawning heaviness at the back of her throat, which quickly mounted to anger. Whoever had recruited the teenager whose blank expression stares from Shepard's early files---her biotic abilities, her alacrity, her dexterity with firearms be damned---should be run out of the service and settled permanently on the most distant outpost the Alliance knows. Shepard had needed therapy, stability, mentoring, and above all love, and they gave her a gun, made her a killing machine, and now pinned the responsibilities of a Spectre on her.

Shepard, oblivious to the second long moment of silence, spoke again. "But not until I can get whatever is up here out first. Until then, Doctor, I'll play along, follow your rules, whatever."

Chakwas prayed it would be enough. She cleared her throat and attempted to remain professional. "Good, Commander. That will do. What I need you to do first," she checked another datapad with the treatment plan on it, "is tell me what moment from your past is affecting you the most. But I think we've already found it---Mindoir. I want you to write for me an account of what happened, as much of it as you can remember. It won't be easy, but it's the first step in, well," Chakwas scratched at an eyebrow, "accomplishing your goal... of staying with us."

"Fine. Anything else?"

"Stay out of firefights?" Chakwas tried a chuckle. "More seriously, Commander, this process will help with your sleep. I can tell you are having intense dreams from the elevated levels in your visual processing. Unfortunately, I can't prescribe you a sleeping agent because they are highly addictive."

"And you gave me one in my pain pills last night, yes?" 

"Very good Commander, I'm impressed. I recommend developing a routine, limiting stimulus before bed, and developing meditation techniques. And no combat tomorrow, either." She marked the recommendations in Shepard's file, but didn't list the cause.

"So you recommend shore leave I don't have. Am I dismissed?"

"Yes, that's all." Chakwas watched Shepard slide off the bed, and exit with uncharacteristic laxity. Perhaps something she had said had affected the Commander. She was truly a marvel of a human specimen, physically, biotically, even emotionally. To have kept her grief and sadness and anger at bay so long with such self-hatred was remarkable. Her fierce defense mechanisms would probably still be holding her emotions back were it not for the beacon. Were she Chakwas's daughter... she'd be so proud, at least until she inevitably tossed the first shovelful of dirt onto the grave and clutched the folded service flag. Pride would become pain. She let the emotions run their course, and sighed again.

With practiced kicks, Chakwas then rolled her exam chair back to the Doctor's station and thoughts and demeanor. She spun to examine her latest results and messages. Alenko's brain tissues were inflamed near his biotic glands, which was unsurprising given the Eden Prime mission report. From his record, Alenko had refrained from manipulating mass fields for some time, and he needed to build up his tolerance again. In addition, she noted his bloodwork came back with increased levels of dopamine, adrenaline, and norepinephrine.

A small smile crept up Chakwas's cheeks. Of course he had been the one, again, to carry the unconscious Commander into medbay, and had again only left because she ordered him out. Perhaps the Commander would find on the Normandy, of all places, what first slavers and then that blasted recruitment officer had robbed her of so long ago: love. That is, if Chakwas could keep the woman's mind and body together long enough to realize she wanted it.


	24. Shepard

Thump-thump-thump-thump. Drops of sweat gathered in Havil's short hair, dripped down to her shoulders, and flowed in a rivulet down her spine, yet her feet continued to pound the ever-retreating ground of the treadmill. She found each physical footfall no more satisfying those she had been taking over and over again in her too short night's dream. But at least there, in the midst of the rushing fire that seared her eyes with its heat, there was a goal, even if she never made it, never quite found her mother and father in time to perish with them. Every step just brought her through more and more trees, silhouettes against the bright fire. The farms of the colony remained always just out of view. At the end of the program, the belt slowed and the machine's whirr slowly died away. She stepped off and waited for her heart to slow, too.

Wiped down and dressed, Havil dropped into a seat in the nearly empty mess with the day's orders and a tray of requited caloric intake. She glanced at the first order on the datapad, scowled, and spoke.

"Awake, Williams?" A few chairs down, Pink was resting her head on her folded arms.

"Yes, ma'am. Ready for duty." 

When Williams raised her head to speak, Havil noted the dark circles and wayward hair. "Your assignment to the Normandy has cleared. As for your readiness..."

"I'm fine, Commander." A gaping yawn escaping Pink suggested otherwise.

Havil cleared her throat. "Right. I'm not..." Havil shot a darkened glance at the medbay, "not in the mood to discipline you. But you need sleep. Is there anything that might help you get your head on straight?" Not everyone was accustomed to being the Alliance's tool, its scarred face, its killer and hero.

Williams propped her head on a hand. For a long moment, all Havil heard was the steady drip of coffee into the pot. "If you're offering, ma'am, a call home and a talk with the Padre."

"The first we can arrange," Havil said, typing the request into her omni-tool. Call time from the Citadel to a human colony was surprisingly open for Spectres. "The Padre?"

"Oh, one of the guys mentioned last night. There's a priest here, down in the Lower Wards, gives mass, does confession..." Another yawn overtook Pink.

"You don't want to see an Alliance Chaplain?" Havil herself avoided them and their inevitable tales of suffering for a purpose.

"Nah, ma'am. It's not the same."

"If you say so. Consider yourself cleared to visit, sometime today, provided you rest first. I don't want to find you passed out waiting for the elevator to find a floor."

"I'll go... rest without protest on one condition." 

Havil sighed. "Jenna. I'll see to it. Now go, sleep."

Pink heaved herself to attention and saluted. "Yes, ma'am." She was on her way to an open pod, and Havil was halfway through some eggs, when she said, "And, Commander... thank you." Anderson's orders were to wrap up anything on the Citadel anyway. She scrolled through. The Alliance cleared Garrus and Tali to billet on the Normandy, but were dragging their feet with Wrex.

She would meet with Anderson in the afternoon, probably to discuss training in the new crew members, and then... Havil powered the datapad off, watching Chakwas's homework assignment flicker into glossy black. If only turning off the beacon's visions, the memories and dreams after seeing Talitha, were that easy. Had it been like this, before? Before she drilled every waking hour, before those flash bullets flew during specialist training, before protocol and orders and her ruthless efficiency in combat ensured she'd fall into a bunk, or chair, or pod and everything else would stay far under, where she buried it? Before she learned emotions were the enemy, and memory the more dangerous battlefield, before she would let the cold seep through her veins whenever smoke or flame threatened?

Havil could not, or did not want to remember. She took the stairs opposite the medbay.

"Joker," what Ballcap was doing in his chair in dock, with the drive core powered down, was beyond Havil. Without a course to plot, he could just as well run diagnostics from another station. Whatever it was, it prevented him from turning to give her his attention. "Tell...," here she paused, remembering that Williams was unconscious, Wrex unauthorized, and Tali untrained. With a rub of her eyes, she continued, "tell Alenko to meet me at C-Sec HQ at 0900. And have him bring Officer Vakarian. Make sure Adams gets Tali started on safety and new recruit procedures in engineering when she reports in today."

"Yes ma'am." The pilot now spun his chair around. "Interesting new crew members, Commander. They gonna wear uniforms? I could order something for the Quarian..."

Only someone with a literal glass jaw could get away with his mouth, Havil thought. "They're what the Alliance is willing to let us have, Flight Lieutenant Moreau." Havil lingered on his rank and name, which from his narrowed eyes, he clearly did not appreciate.

"Read you loud and clear, ma'am."

"Good." The chair spun back with a little swish and clicked into place.

C-Sec thronged with the flow of bureaucracy---civilians gesticulating wildly while trying to file complaints, officers deathly still while processing reports at workstations, and detectives tapping talons in thought while scrolling through evidence at terminals. Havil immersed herself in it, letting every sense pour its input over the memories and visions striving for her attention. Like in a battle, she let her mind sort important from unimportant stimulus, riding that intuition away from reflection and thought.

As her mind selected Sideburn's rasp, she heard him ask Garrus, "How do you type with only three fingers?"

"Well, our language has fewer letters than Earth Standard, so it works out. Not that it makes all the paperwork any better." Their guide to C-Sec groaned, "So much paperwork."

Without thought, Havil riposted, "If you're going to miss it, the Alliance also has its share of reports to file..." Even as the words left her lips, she remembered her own unfilled report in the darkened glass of the datapad. Her throat closed, and she sought again the blue light, the metal walls, the chatter.

"No thanks, Commander," Garrus laughed. "I had forgotten humans had a sense of humor. Chellick's office is up on the left."

"There will be less laughing she orders you to do it." Alenko replied, perhaps testing Garrus's ability to follow protocol---an otherwise prudent caution, but unnecessary. Turians were practically bred to follow orders.

"Ah, but how will I?" Garrus waved a talon at Sideburns. "Better leave that you five-fingered folk. Here we are."

The cubby-like office was tucked on the side of a long hall, and Chellick sat behind the desk. Without any doors, C-Sec offices must have impressive sound damping to keep important conversations private. The Turian pointed to a stark, utilitarian metal chair.

"Commander Shepard, what the hell were you thinking? Trying to get Jenna killed? I expected better from a Spectre," Chellick burst out before she managed to finish sitting.

"If it's her life we're actually worried about, I could say the same thing, Detective. A barmaid at Chora's Den as your inside source? Do you have any idea how dangerous that place is?"

"Less," Chellick threw back at her, "than when Spectres go shooting it up."

Garrus's chortle died in a cough. Havil sat forward, curling her hands on the chair's seat, and regretting the required checking of her weapons at C-Sec's entrance. Alenko noisily shifted his weight behind her. "That is beside the point. What is so important that you have a civilian instead of an operative undercover?" Like the scientists on Eden Prime and Doctor Michel, civilians didn't belong in the crossfire. That was Havil's job. She pressed her palms into the hard edge of the chair and willed the sight of the altered corpses away.

"Illegal weapons sales," Chellick responded. "And I'm very close to completing my investigation, as long as you don't go mucking it up by making a scene." His mandibles waved, and Havil briefly wondered what it would take to snap one. Given the tough carapace, a rocket to the face, maybe. 

Denting his carapace, at least, would definitely be satisfying. "If you're almost done, what's the last piece you need? Is there something we could do to speed this up and get Jenna out of danger?"

"I don't know why you even care, Shepard. It's not like she's your blood relative---I checked. But since you are so insistent and since I don't need a Spectre in my crests, or what is it the human officers say, in my hair," he clicked through on the terminal and turned to here the manifest of her and Alenko's guns, "a band of well-armed persons might secure the final piece of evidence, as long as you, Commander, aren't stupidly recognizable as humanity's attempt at Spectreship." Shepard felt the charge in the air around her shift. Alenko. She quickly rose, putting herself between them and calling on all of her military training of not punching out foul-mouthed and ill-tempered superiors. "Just tell me when and where," she said. "Lower Wards market, two hours. Consent to take the shipment and pay with this," he dug in a desk drawer and handed her a credit chit. "Don't arrest the dealer, pick a fight, or do anything else asinine. I want the seller's boss."

Havil had already turned to leave when Alenko asked, "And that will get Jenna off the hook?" Of course, he would want to make sure the deal was set, rules established.

"Yes, yes, the human's assignment will be over."

If Udina had his way, Havil's would be soon, too. As she left C-Sec and snapped her shotgun and assault rifle back into their holsters on the back of her light, sleeveless armor, she wondered what chasing and killing Saren would be like without a full team of Alliance marines by her side. She watched Alenko check his pistol, ensure its safety was engaged, and snap it into place on his hip. Garrus, in his C-Sec armor, slid a sniper rifle down a side of his back hump and bared his pointed teeth in a Turian smile. She was about to find out.


	25. Alenko

Tromping through the Lower Wards with light armor and weapons probably wasn't the best way to get a feel for where most people on the Citadel could afford to live, eat, and work. It was crowded for Kaidan, as he kept rubbing arms and shoulders with passersby, a consequence of his diligent effort to keep space between him and Shepard. Even starships felt spacious compared to this, and they had nothing on his childhood home near the last bit of protected Canadian wilderness, where the sun and birdsong brought morning, and stars and lone loon calls signaled night.

The streets here were choked with all species, colors, sizes, and smells, from tiny little Volus tots trundling along in their pressure suits to Krogan with their high humps stomping through the crowds. The thought of being swept up in this river of organic life, nearly left him gasping like a paddler suddenly surfacing in icy whitewater rapids. In the chaos he clung to soldierly awareness: checking marked exits, people deviating from the stream, remaining painfully aware of his right hand as it guarded his pistol and of his left, dangerously close to Shepard's.

To his right, Garrus carefully cradled his assault rifle, barrel down, with the ease of practice born of many foot patrols. The Turian's dedication to duty appeared in low gravelly tones as he now and then pointed out red sand deals going down or illegal prostitution on offer. As they passed, a few people, like the scrubby Human and Salarian who just now caught sight of Garrus, would melt into shadows beyond Kaidan's vision. Garrus would grunt something about vermin, and several times Kaidan thought he saw the Turian's trigger talon waver. He frowned. Certainly C-Sec had rules about detention, search, and trials, even here in this mass of life.

Despite himself, Kaidan risked a sidelong glance at Shepard. The tingle of his arm next to hers signaled an active aura, which matched the tension evident in her tight shoulders and springing steps. He reveled for a moment in her stark features: the scars, the nose in profile, the deeply set eyes, the ears clear against the closely shorn hair at the sides, a red mess that culminated in the spikes on top. Her scan of the crowd swung his way, and he quickly focused on the morass of bobbing heads before him. 

Just as they had in the Normandy's docking bay, he couldn't help but notice Shepard's charge and physicality. Kaidan rubbed his eyes, hoping they somehow deceived him. He had stayed up late reading and rereading the regulations on fraternization, various penalties for breaking them, and how they functioned in recognized relationships like marriages. If he squinted, he could still see the orange send button blinking at him from the bottom of a transfer request he had filled out on a datapad. He couldn't press it. 

He found himself looking at Shepard again, wondering about her plan, her thoughts, her dreams. No ordinary woman held audiences with the Consort at will, or disarmed and disabused Turian generals, or flew through enemy fire and mass displacement with the ease of an eagle aloft. Yet twice he clutched her in his arms, carrying her limp form to the Normandy's medbay with strength borne of worried adrenaline. And twice, he mused, it had been his fault---first, for activating the beacon, and second, for letting her negotiate with the distressed woman.

Kaidan nearly stumbled as he realized late that Shepard and Garrus had halted in front of a large arch with "Marketplace" lit up in Asari, Turian, Salarian, Galactic Standard, and half a dozen lesser languages, including, surprisingly, his own native Human Global. "Garrus?" Shepard asked.

"This is the place, Commander. Weapons, mods, armor---lots of legal merchants here, but plenty of criminal activity as well. Best to be careful." the Turian warned.

"Noted. Also, I couldn't help but see you're not very popular down here, are you?"

"Well, beside that beauty pageant I won, no," Garrus laughed at his own joke. "I'm C-Sec, and, well, my undercover career ended with, as you say, a bang." He patted his rifle, and straighened   
up. "Right, wrong, reward and consequence, it's part of who I am. Is that a problem."

Kaidan watched Shepard tilt her head slightly, and then close her eyes as if willing a sight away. The idea of the scaly Turian male in a formal gown wasn't one he'd linger on, either. "No, but it does make you a liability here."

Garrus nodded, and Shepard continued. "Lieutenant Alenko and I will go in first, a couple of well-supplied human mercs just making a deal. We'll find the dealer," she tapped on her omni-tool, "Jax, Krogan, slightly green tinted---pay up, take the goods, and be on our way. But just in case..."

"I read you, Commander. I'll loiter with some of the more legal sellers, feign interest on stocking up for a long mission against adversaries many, strong, and unknown. You, uh, don't know anyone recruiting for that kind of gig?" Garrus waved a talon.

Shepard stared at Garrus, her green eyes ringed with dark circles. Kaidan caught himself holding his breath, released only when the corners of Shepard's mouth turned up in a thin smirk. Kaidan shifted uneasily. He knew he had no right to even care, but... was Garrus... flirting? He tried to remind his turning stomach that it didn't matter anyway.

"Commander," he started, unsure where he was going.

"Kaidan," she said, with some strain. He did not exactly hear what came after, though it was something about being undercover themselves. She grabbed two stickers from a nearby peddler. The hairs on his chest rose as she slapped one over his Alliance insignia and one over her own N7.

"Ma'am," he recovered to say, "that's, uh, not going to disguise your face, which is everywhere on the news vids right now." And, now that he had the luxury of inspecting it, could use several nights of solid sleep and less messing of her Lieutenant making mistakes.

She purchased a baseball hat from a vendor hawking human clothes, curled the brim with a flex of interlaced hands, and drew it low over her eyes. It couldn't disguise how she moved as she signaled Garrus off to mingle and steered Kaidan to a shop full of pricey Asari-made biotic amps. He'd heard of the Savant series, but had never seen one, and, as he checked the price tag, he'd never afford one.

"Wow," he pointed out the display. 

She just shook her head, and they pretended to browse the rest of the bustling market in silence. He spotted a hulking silhouette standing still among the busy shoppers and tapped Shepard's shoulder. "Eleven o'clock, in the dark corner by those crates," he whispered.

While she did not threaten to shove him through a bulkhead for his infraction on her space, she did not reward him either. She took her time in turning to look and assess the situation. She also made Garrus, a few stalls away, looking over a couple of sniper rifles. 

"Ok, let's go smuggle some weapons, Lieutenant."

"Words I'd never thought I'd hear," he said. With the return of formality came the return of her coiling gait that just managed to harness her power, and the hardness of her face. 

Smuggling weapons, angling for his superior's smile... Kaidan made no attempt to swim against the current of the emotions that carried him along regardless of rules and protocols with predictable consequences and order. He knew they existed for reasons. He had lived those reasons. He let his fingers run through his hair with a sigh, and went with Shepard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I appreciate your reading my story, and I hope you are getting some of the fun out of it that I have writing it! I'm hoping to finish this Citadel ark in the next week or so. In the next month or so I'm finishing a degree, moving, and starting a new job, and I don't know what time I'll have for writing. I'll be very busy, but I'll update as I can. -jadeumbrella


End file.
